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JULIAN^  ALDSN  WEI\ 


Julian  Alden  Weir 

AV^APP%ECIA  TIOV^ 
OF  /IIS  LIFE  AND  WOI^KS 


The  'Phillips  Publications 
^(umber  One 

E.  P.  Dutton  iS Company 

New  York 

1922 


Copyright,  192 1,  by  'The  Century  Association  of  New  Tork  City 
Copyright,  1922,  by  E.  P.  Dutton  &  Company  of  New  York  City 


D.  B.  Updike,  The  Merry  mount  Press,  Boston 


JULIA^ALDSN  WEIT^ 
tAn  Appreciation  of  His  Life  and  Workt 


CONTENTS 


Julian  Alden  Weir 
By  Duncan  Phillips 

Weir  the  Painter 
By  Emil  Carlsen 

Weir 

By  Royal  Cortissoz 

Reminiscences  of  Weir 
By  Childe  Han  am 

The  Tile  Club 
By  /.  B.  Millet 

Weir  the  Fisherman 
By  H.  de  Raasloff 

A  Letter 

From  Augustus  Vincent  Tack 

A  Letter 

From  C.  E.  S.  Wood 

List  of  Paintings 


[  ™  ] 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRA  TIOJ^S 


Portrait  of  Julian  A/den  Weir  frontispiece 

From  a  photograph,  by  Pirie  MacDonald 

An  Alsatian  Girl  following  page  120 

Owned  by  Phillips  Memorial  Gallery,  IV ashington 

Portrait  of  Robert  W.  Weir,  the  Artist's  Father 

Owned  by  Mrs.  J.  Aid  en  IV eir,  New  Tork  City 

Roses 

Owned  by  Charles  L.  Baldwin,  New  Tork  City 

The  Road  to  the  Old  Farm 

Owned  by  Charles  L.  Baldwin 

The  High  Pasture 
The  Farm  in  Winter 
The  Donkey  Ride 
The  Gray  Bodice 
Plowing  for  Buckwheat 
The  Border  of  the  Farm 
The  Orchid 
Upland  Pasture 


Owned  by  Phillips  Memorial  Gallery 
Owned  by  Charles  V.  Wheeler,  IV ashington 
Owned  by  Mrs.  J.  Alden  IV eir 
Owned  by  T'ke  Art  Institute,  Chicago 
Owned  by  Carnegie  Institute,  Pittsburgh 
Owned  by  Mrs.  Robert  C.  V ose,  Boston 
Owned  by  Frank  L.  Babbott,  Brooklyn 
Owned  by  National  Gallery,  IV ashington 

[  ix  ] 


LIST  OF  ILLUST^T/O^S 
A  Gentlewoman 

Owned  by  National  Gallery,  W ashington 

The  Plaza— Nocturne 

Owned  by  Horatio  S.  Rubens,  New  Tork  City 

Pan  and  the  Wolf 

Owned  by  Phillips  Memorial  Gallery 

Little  Lizzie  Lynch 

Owned  by  Mrs.  H.  M.  Adams,  Glen  Cove,  L.  I. 

Pussy-  Willows 

Owned  by  Mrs.  "James  IV all  Finn,  New  Tork  City 

The  Spreading  Oak 

Owned  by  Colonel  C.  E.  S.  IV ood,  Portland,  Oregon 

The  Fishing  Party 

Owned  by  Phillips  Memorial  Gallery 

Portrait  of  Miss  de  L. 

Owned  by  T'he  Corcoran  Gallery  of  Art,  W ashington 

Knitting  for  Soldiers 

Owned  by  Phillips  Memorial  Gallery 

Afternoon  by  the  Pond 

Owned  by  Charles  L.  Baldwin 

Portrait  Bust,  by  Olin  Warner 

Owned  by  Mrs.  Olin  IV arner,  New  Tork  City 

Portrait  of  Julian  Alden  Weir,  by  Wolfinger 

Owned  by  Mrs.  J.  Alden  W eir 


[  *  1 


The  copyright  of  the  Weir  Memorial  Volume  has  been  acquired 
from  the  Century  Association  by  Mr.  Duncan  Phillips,  of  the 
Phillips  Memorial  Gallery,  in  order  to  gain  a  wider  circulation 
for  the  book  than  is  possible  with  a  private  publication .  Eight  illus- 
trations have  been  added  at  the  end  of  the  book  preceding  the 
List  of  Paintings,  together  with  the  announcement  of  the  Phillips 
Memorial  Gallery.  The  book  now  appears  as  one  of  The  Phillips 
Publications. 

The  eight  added  illustrations  are  as  follows: 

Flower  Girl  Owned  by  Mr.  W.  S.  Stimmel 

Woodland  Rocks  Phillips  Memorial  Gallery,  Washington 

The  Open  Book  Owned  by  Mr.  John  Gellatly 
Photograph  of  Julian  Alden  Weir       Owned  by  Mr.  Duncan  Phillips 

Building  the  Dam  Owned  by  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Visiting  Neighbors  Phillips  Memorial  Gallery,  Washington 

Reflections,  from  an  Etching  Owned  by  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Roses  Owned  by  Phillips  Memorial  Gallery 

Only  J 1 2  copies  with  the  added  illustrations  and  text,  as  outlined 
above,  have  been  printed. 

Committee  on  Publications 

J.  B.  Millet,  Chairman  Frank  Jewett  Mather,  Jr. 

Leila  Mechlin  Charles  D.  Lay 

Dorothy  Weir  Mahonri  Young 

Elizabeth  Hudson  Gifford  Beal 

Ex  Officio 

Duncan  Phillips  Dwight  Clark 

Marjorie  Phillips  Augustus  Vincent  Tack 

Trustees  of  Phillips  Memorial  Gallery 


JULIA^ALDSN  WEI%^ 
By  Duncan  Phillips 
I 

SINCE  the  passing,  so  recently,  from  our  midst  of 
J.  Alden  Weir,  the  best  critical  opinion,  in  his  own 
country  at  least,  has  crystallized  rapidly  and  acclaimed 
him  with  a  remarkable  degree  of  confidence  as  a  man 
for  the  ages,  as  one  who  now  enters  upon  a  splendid 
destiny  of  imperishable  and  ever  increasing  fame.  I  do  not 
feel  certain  that  Weir  will  ever  be  one  of  the  popular 
painters  who  are  appraised  at  or  above  their  real  value  by 
the  general  public.  He  never  carried  his  heart  on  his 
sleeve,  never  painted  pictures  which  correspond  to  "house- 
hold words,"  never  tried  to  entertain  nor  to  educate  the 
crowd,  nor  to  organize  a  following  and  start  a  "move- 
ment." He  was  contemptuous  not  only  of  sentimentality, 
but  of  sensationalism  and  of  the  notoriety  which  so  often 
passes  for  fame,  and  in  his  own  manner  of  painting,  so 
marked  was  his  restraint  that  he  tended  to  an  expression 
of  unconscious  austerity.  Yet  he  was  the  most  approach- 
able and  genial  of  men.  The  very  essence  of  his  art — 
what  makes  it  great  —  what  will  make  it  immortal  —  is 

[  3  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEI\ 

the  warm  and  glowing  lovableness  which  underlies  the 
reserve.  Weir  believed  that  art  does  not  deserve  all  the  time 
and  talk  men  spend  upon  it  if  it  does  not  stimulate  to 
finer  issues  our  dormant  faculties  for  living.  If  the  value 
of  art  is  measured  according  to  its  expressional  power, 
then  the  art  of  Weir  is  very  great  even  if  it  is  not  entirely 
easy  of  access.  It  is  the  pure  gold  deep  in  the  earth  which 
we  must  dig  to  find,  not  the  cheap  gilding  on  the  gaudy 
surface  of  commercial  ornaments. 

We  have  lost  in  Weir  a  painter  of  a  great  tradition —  an 
artist  absolutely  individual  and  independent  of  any  School, 
yet  one  who  belongs  in  the  company  of  all  those  masters 
of  truthful  observation  and  personal  expression  in  painting 
who  have  cared  more  for  true  and  fine  relations  of  color 
and  tone  and  of  light  and  shade,  and  for  true  and  fine  in- 
terpretations of  beauty  and  character  in  the  visible  world, 
than  for  the  formal  analysis  of  abstract  esthetic  principles 
and  the  repetition  of  formulas  for  classical  design.  Weir  was 
beloved  by  all  factions  in  the  rather  overheated  air  of  dis- 
putation in  which,  strange  to  say,  art  seems  to  flourish. 
There  never  was  any  doubt  where  he  stood.  Although 

[  + ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  TIO^ 

a  member  of  the  National  Academy  since  1885,  and  Presi- 
dent of  that  body  from  1915  to  1917,  he  was  nevertheless 
an  adventurous  spirit  himself,  open-minded  and  sympa- 
thetic in  regard  to  the  adventures  of  the  younger  men, 
and  frankly  opposed  to  the  tyranny  of  traditions  and  to 
all  dogmatic  intolerance.  His  reasonableness  was  so  sweet 
that  poseurs  were  shamed  to  sincerity  and  extremists  so- 
bered to  moderation  by  his  influence,  recognizing  in  him 
a  spirit  no  less  young  than  theirs,  but  mellowed  by  a  big 
sincerity  and  a  temperate  and  judicious  poise  and  a  loyalty 
to  high  ideals.  In  his  own  work  there  is  fundamentally 
a  selection  and  a  fusion  of  what  was  best  in  the  truly  great 
artists  of  many  centuries.  However,  so  fresh  was  his  point 
of  view,  so  spontaneous  and  ardent  his  response  to  the  stim- 
ulations of  life,  so  self-reliant  his  character  and  so  fond 
of  experiment  his  boyish  nature,  that  slowly,  even  labo- 
riously, yet  surely,  he  evolved  and  created  for  himself  a 
technique  which  is  his  alone  in  the  history  of  art,  and 
the  perfect  medium  for  the  expression  of  what  he  had  to 
say.  Old  Masters  as  different  as  Velasquez  and  Rembrandt, 
Chardin  and  Gainsborough,  Constable  and  Corot,  would 

[  5  ] 


JUL/A^  ALD8N  WEI\ 

have  recognized  in  Weir  an  artist  of  their  unmistakable 
kind.  Jean  Francois  Millet  stood  before  the  prize-winning 
picture  which  Weir,  a  Beaux  Arts  student  at  the  time, 
had  painted  for  his  landlady  of  the  Inn  at  Barbizon,  and 
exclaimed,  "Tout  a  fait  distingue."  Where  Corot,  Monet, 
and  Manet  left  off,  Weir  carried  on. 

I  realize  that  I  should  not  be  hazarding  an  opinion  nor 
daring  to  estimate  the  ultimate  place  in  history  of  one  so 
near  to  me  in  time  and  so  dear  to  me  in  memory.  I  loved 
Alden  Weir,  and  now  that  he  is  gone  it  is  more  difficult 
than  ever  for  me  to  write  of  him  as  an  artist  in  a  manner 
altogether  free  from  the  bias  of  my  affection  for  him  as  a 
man.  Fortunately  in  this  case  the  man  and  his  work  were 
one.  It  would  be  difficult  to  estimate  the  man  and  his  own 
special  and  indispensable  quality  without  reference  to  his 
work  which  perfectly  expressed  him.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  would  be  most  unprofitable  to  study  his  paintings  from 
the  merely  technical  standpoint,  since  there  is  no  tech- 
nical merit  in  his  work,  however  great,  that  explains  the 
enchantment  of  his  art,  which  is  absolutely  a  matter  of 
personal  charm;  charm  plus  nobility  breathed  into  his 

[ 6  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  TIOO^ 

best  drawing  and  pervading  that  unerring  instinct  for  fine 
choices  which  we  may  call  his  taste,  so  that  his  art  and  his 
personality  seem  to  be  somehow  compounded  and  insepa- 
rable, and  his  paintings  the  radiations  of  his  own  spirit, 
sincere,  sensitive,  almost  shy,  yet  virile  and  joyous. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  two  outstanding  points  that 
I  wish  to  emphasize  are,  first,  Weir's  special  capacity  to 
make  us  see  and  feel  that  ordinary  human  experiences  are 
desirable  and  delightful,  and  the  world  (to  each  his  own 
world)  full  of  places  and  people  inexplicably  attractive 
and  worth  knowing.  Second,  the  personal  independence 
which  pervaded  everything  he  did  and  found  for  itself  a 
well-pondered  and  ultimately  perfected  medium  of  expres- 
sion, so  well  adapted  to  it  that  it  seems  part  of  it,  the 
spirit  of  the  artist  animating  and  refining  the  rather  rebel- 
lious substances  of  the  copious  pigment  which  he  loaded 
and  manipulated  mysteriously.  There  is  a  third  point  which 
I  wish  now  to  stress  —  his  Americanism,  his  combination 
of  certain  traits  which  we  like  to  think  of  as  characteris- 
tic, not  of  what  is  common  but  what  is  best  in  the  Amer- 
ican. In  this  third  aspect  of  his  art  we  shall  only  be  con- 

[  7  ] 


JUL/A^  ALD8N  WEIT^ 

sidering  again  the  first  and  second,  for  they  complete  my 
very  simple  conception  and  interpretation  of  Weir  the 
artist  and  Weir  the  man.  His  Americanism  was,  let  me 
admit  at  once,  of  a  special  rather  than  a  complete  or  com- 
posite character.  As  has  been  said  of  him,  "From  the 
America  of  immigration  and  quantity  production  he  stood 
apart.  His  task  was  to  fix  the  survival  of  the  older  Amer- 
ica," the  Anglo-Saxon  America  of  the  founders  of  our  old 
families,  more  particularly  yet,  the  America  developed  in 
New  England  and  New  York.  Weir  carried  into  Amer- 
ican painting,  writes  Frank  Jewett  Mather  in  The  Weekly 
Review,  "  a  quality  of  esthetic  conscience  akin  to  that  of 
William  Dean  Howells  and  Henry  James  in  his  earlier 
phase.  Whether  his  theme  was  a  New  England  village  or 
farm  or  a  finely  bred  American  girl,  earnest,  trained  in 
scruple  and  nicety  of  thought  and  conduct,  always  he 
thought  to  tell  the  truth  of  the  matter,  neglecting  none 
of  the  finer  shades  and  overtones." 

Now  this  subtlety  of  observation  and  this  delicacy  of 
feeling  are  not  generally  considered  qualities  either  of 
American  art  or  of  American  character,  at  least  not  by 

[  §  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/O^ 

those  who  usually  talk  loudest  and  longest  about  what 
they  call  " the  American  note"  or  "the  American  flavor" 
in  books  and  plays  and  paintings.  There  is  a  cult  nowa- 
s  across  the  sea  and  among  the  European-minded  art 
critics  of  our  eastern  cities  for  Americanism  in  art.  What- 
ever good  work  is  done  that  does  not  give  the  American 
flavor  or  sound  the  American  note  can  be  excused  by 
these  critics  as  an  excellent  by-product,  but  must  be  dis- 
couraged as  liable  to  interfere  with  the  production  of  the 
genuine  American  article.  Indeed,  the  American  article  in 
art  has  become  one  of  our  successful  industries.  The  con- 
tinental relish  for  the  American  flavor  is  now  catered  to 
consciously  and  carefully  by  novelists,  dramatists,  musi- 
cians, architects,  sculptors,  and  painters,  impatient  to  ac- 
quire European  reputations.  To  be  sure,  Walt  Whitman, 
Bret  Harte,  and  Mark  Twain  did  not  have  Europe  in  mind 
when  they  created  out  of  the  raw  fabric  of  their  own 
experiences  Leaves  of  Grass,  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp, 
and  Huckleberry  Finn,  yet  even  these  great  authors 
were  subject  to  the  lure  of  a  foreign  vogue  for  their 
native  products,  and  they  all  lived  to  luxuriate  in  their 

[  9  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEI^ 

own  homely  Americanism.  Whitman  especially  seemed 
confident  of  his  future  influence  with  the  European- 
minded  critics.  He  was  always  arrogantly  self-conscious 
in  proclaiming  that  he  thundered  with  the  voice  of  a  new 
continent  and  of  a  new  evangel.  Unquestionably  there  was 
in  the  man  a  glowing  enthusiasm  for  the  human  species 
and  a  rapturous  exaltation  about  the  American  social  ex- 
periment. The  European-minded  critics  are  certain  that 
Old  Walt  represents  what  American  art  is  or  should  be. 
They  insist  that  America  is  not  only  frank  and  free  and 
brave,  but  also  vulgar  and  vain  and  fond  of  creating  a  sen- 
sation. Now  it  is  true,  perhaps,  that  our  American  sym- 
phony calls  for  a  few  blaring  thrills  of  brass,  but  after  all, 
the  big  bass  tuba  cannot  speak  for  the  whole  orchestra. 

The  paintings  of  J.  Alden  Weir  unconsciously  express 
the  reticent,  innate  idealism  which  guides  and  guards  the 
better  known  materialism  of  America.  It  is  an  injustice  to 
ascribe  to  the  average  American  an  indifference  to  that 
grace  of  spirit  which  we  call  refinement.  We  may  be  a 
shirt-sleeves  Democracy,  but  we  have  our  own  standards. 
The  attitude  of  the  average  American  to  that  indefinable, 

[  "  ] 


AN  APPT{ECIA  T/O^ 

unmistakable  something  which  the  old  colored  servants  of 
the  South  used  to  call  "quality"  —  the  quality  of  their 
masters — curiously  corresponds  to  that  indefinable,  unmis- 
takable something  in  a  work  of  art  which  artists  and 
critics  also  call  quality,  recognizing  an  air  of  esthetic 
aristocracy.  In  the  mind  of  Alden  Weir  the  refinements 
of  observation  and  emotion  to  which  he  was  ever  bring- 
ing his  big,  genial,  whole-hearted  tribute  seemed  to  re- 
quire from  him  also  a  technical  language  of  similarly 
subtle  and  particularized  distinction.  He  could  suddenly 
become  absorbed  and  fascinated  by  the  momentary  effect 
of  a  long  familiar  and  unremarkable  scene.  I  remember 
his  picture  of  the  corner  of  a  high  pasture,  just  a  bit  of 
sunshine  playing  along  a  stone  wall  and  over  a  well-worn 
foot-path,  and  a  silvery  green  tree  outspread  against  a 
warm  blue  sky.  The  design  of  the  picture  I  discovered 
later  to  be  original  and  delightful,  but  my  first  pleasure 
was  that  of  recognition.  I  seemed  to  have  passed  that  way 
many  a  time,  and  to  have  noticed  unconsciously  just  such 
an  effect  of  light  and  color.  Memories  came  back  to 
me  of  walks  in  the  country  —  of  days  on  a  farm.  It  is 

[  »  ] 


JULIA^ALDSN  WEI\ 

wonderful  that  some  little  songs  and  apparently  casual 
little  landscapes  have  such  power  to  make  the  fugitive 
moods  which  come  and  go  with  the  ordinary  round  of 
our  days  and  nights  almost  haunting  in  their  persistence 
and  poignancy.  So  also  with  Weir's  portraits.  He  could 
see  distinction  in  an  apparently  ordinary  model  and  make 
us  see  what  he  had  seen  to  like  and  admire.  Whether 
convinced  or  not,  our  hearts  go  out  to  him  for  feeling  that 
way  about  people ;  for  saying  and  believing  and  repeating 
that  homeliness  covers  but  cannot  conceal  the  beauties 
which  are  real  and  endeared  by  association,  and  distin- 
guished not  by  conventional  comeliness  but  by  essential 
character.  Of  such  a  kind  was  the  idealism  of  Weir,  and 
in  spite  of  the  European-minded  critics,  we  know  that 
this  chivalry  of  thought  and  this  idealizing  love  of  fa- 
miliar things  are  traits  of  the  fundamental,  the  original 
American. 

His  themes  were  American,  his  mind  was  American, 
his  method  was  American,  and  he  was  American  heart 
and  soul.  Many  stories  of  his  patriotism  are  told.  Al- 
though forty-six  years  old  at  the  time  of  the  war  with 

[  12  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/OJAC 

Spain,  he  volunteered  for  active  military  service.  I  shall 
never  forget  the  fire  in  his  eyes  as  he  spoke  of  our  na- 
tional dishonor  in  the  unhappy  early  years  of  the  World 
War.  Nor  will  the  splendid  memory  fade  of  that  inclem- 
ent day  when  Weir,  old  and  ill  and  lame,  but  buoyant, 
ardent,  eager  to  show  his  colors,  marched  with  the  artists 
in  the  Preparedness  Parade.  It  is  only  natural  that  Weir's 
national  spirit  should  have  been  strong,  for  the  child  is 
father  of  the  man,  and  Weir's  childhood  was  spent  at 
West  Point,  where  his  father,  Robert  W.  Weir,  was 
professor  of  drawing  from  1834  to  1877  in  the  U.  S.  Mil- 
itary Academy.  J.  Alden  Weir  was  born  at  the  Point, 
August  30,  1852,  one  of  sixteen  children.  From  all  ac- 
counts Julian  was  a  normal,  active,  athletic  American  boy 
and,  needless  to  say,  an  imaginative  one.  I  have  heard  an 
anecdote  told  of  his  childhood  which  shows  his  early  ini- 
tiative and  enterprise.  A  friend  remembers  that  one  moon- 
light night  he  was  found  with  some  small  companions, 
half-way  up  a  very  tall  ladder  which  the  boys  had  placed 
against  the  steep  wall  of  an  old  barn.  Julian  explained  that 
they  were  going  to  try  to  get  up  to  the  moon  which,  to 

[  n  ] 


JULIA^ALDBN  WEIT^ 

their  excited  eyes,  appeared  to  have  landed  big  and  bright 
right  on  top  of  the  roof.  There  was  nothing  precocious 
either  in  his  mind  or  in  his  talent  in  these  early  years. 
In  fact,  he  showed  no  exceptional  talent  in  the  days  when 
he  first  tried  his  hand  at  drawing,  under  his  father's  in- 
struction, in  that  old  barn  back  of  the  house.  Nevertheless, 
the  boy's  enjoyment  of  pictures  developed  rapidly,  and  he 
was  determined  to  become  an  artist.  His  taste  preceded 
his  talent,  and  he  showed  very  soon  that  art  was  his  natural 
language,  that  the  root  of  the  matter,  so  to  speak,  was  in 
him.  Given  this  inherent,  esthetic  instinct,  and  the  pa- 
tient, self-reliant  tenacity  of  purpose  which  characterized 
him  from  the  first,  and  sooner  or  later  he  was  certain  to 
succeed. 

As  a  newspaper  critic  once  shrewdly  suggested  —  if 
Weir  in  his  student  days  had  worked  in  an  intimate  re- 
lation with  some  great  artist  who  had  been  also  a  con- 
genial spirit  and  who  would  have  helped  him  to  mature 
his  individuality  of  mind  and  hand,  a  master  who  would 
have  borne  the  same  relation  to  him  that  Twachtman 
bore  to  Ernest  Lawson,  he  would  probably  have  arrived  and 

[  H  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  TTO^i 

found  himself  and  formed  his  own  peculiarly  distinguished 
style  much  sooner.  The  man  who  almost,  though  not  quite, 
performed  this  service  for  Weir  was  the  Frenchman,  Bas- 
tien-Lepage.  Weir  went  to  Paris  to  study  painting  in  1873, 
and  was  enrolled  in  the  Ecole  des  Beaux  Arts  under  Ge- 
rome, the  painter  of  large,  historical  tableaux  which  show 
infinite  labor  in  archeological  research  and  imitative  draw- 
ing. Consequently  the  pictures  young  Weir  painted  during 
his  first  year  in  that  studio  were  "a  la  Gerome,"  and  that 
means  the  antithesis  of  what  he  himself  was  destined  to 
do.  Although  he  never  lost  his  admiration  for  Gerome  as 
a  teacher  and  was  always  glad  to  have  had  such  ground- 
ing in  correct  drawing  and  minute  observation  as  the 
pupils  of  this  stern  old  painter  could  not  fail  to  receive, 
yet  it  was  not  long  before  the  student  saw  the  coldness 
and  hardness  of  the  method  of  his  master,  and  even  before 
he  left  the  studio,  other  lights  were  leading  his  undecided 
steps  in  very  different  directions.  Gerome  disapproved 
violently  of  Courbet  and  the  Impressionists,  yes,  even  of 
Millet  and  Corot,  but  to  his  credit  be  it  said,  he  never 
interfered  with  the  temperamental  predilections  of  his 

[  15  ] 


JULIAN^  ALDSN  WEI^ 

pupils.  He  trained  them  conscientiously  and  solicitously 
in  their  drawing,  but  when  they  knew  how  to  draw,  he 
sent  them  on  their  separate  ways  with  his  warning.  In 
1873  Weir  met  for  the  first  time  Jules  Bastien-Lepage, 
and  subsequently  became  the  intimate  friend  of  this  bril- 
liant young  Frenchman  who,  like  so  many  other  artists 
destined  to  an  early  death,  matured  rapidly  and  achieved 
in  early  youth  both  a  style  and  a  reputation.  Bastien  at 
twenty-five  seems  to  have  been  regarded  as  a  leader,  as 
a  cbere  maitre  by  the  group  of  art  students  who  gath- 
ered around  him  and  were  his  comrades.  Alden  Weir  was 
of  this  group. 

In  the  book  on  Modern  French  Masters  (Century  Co., 
1896),  which  presented  biographical  appreciations  by  Amer- 
ican painters,  the  chapter  on  Bastien-Lepage  was  written 
by  Weir.  It  is  full  of  intimate  talk  about  the  subjects 
which  were  of  supreme  interest  to  the  Parisian  art  stu- 
dent of  his  time.  Many  a  pupil  of  Gerome  shared  Weir's 
revolt  against  the  artificiality  and  the  perfunctory  elabo- 
rations turned  out  with  great  effort  in  the  name  of  art 
for  the  applause  of  the  populace  and  for  the  awards  of 

[  16  ] 


AN  APPT{ECTA  TIO^ 

the  Government.  There  was  a  great  cry  for  a  return  to 
nature.  At  Mile.  Anna's  restaurant,  in  the  particular  circle 
where  young  Bastien  dined  with  his  admirers  hung  a  pic- 
ture of  a  French  holiday  in  Spring,  which  he  had  given 
in  payment  of  his  account.  This  picture  was  decorated  by 
the  boys  when  Bastien  failed  to  win  the  Prix  de  Rome 
with  his  picture  of  "The  Angel  Appearing  to  the  Shep- 
herds," and  not  one  of  the  group  but  felt  assured  of  their 
wisdom  as  superior  to  that  of  the  members  of  the  academic 
jury  who  had  so  stupidly  failed  to  honor  themselves  in  hon- 
oring their  idol.  Bastien  invited  them  all  to  visit  him  at  his 
home  in  the  village  of  Damvillers  during  the  fete  of  the 
village,  and  Weir  describes  the  experience  with  delight 
in  the  memory.  As  he  says,  "We  loved  Bastien  for  his 
honesty,  his  truth,  and  his  sincerity,"  and  he  always  re- 
tained a  good  part,  if  not  all,  of  his  boyish  enthusiasm  for 
the  French  realist's  art,  with  its  genuine  love  of  nature  and 
human  nature,  its  unaffected  simplicity,  its  kinship  of  line 
to  Holbein,  its  popular  adaptation  of  the  subjects  of  Millet 
and  the  true  values  of  Manet. 

I  have  touched  at  some  length  on  the  atelier  of  Gerome 

[  *7  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEIT^ 

and  on  the  friendship  with  Bastien  because  there  is  some- 
thing significant  in  the  fact  that,  unlike  so  many  others 
who  felt  the  force  of  Gerome's  teaching  and  the  charm 
of  Bastien's  friendship,  Weir  showed  no  lasting  trace  of 
the  influence  of  either  man.  One  of  the  few  subjects  upon 
which  Weir  often  felt  impelled  in  later  days  to  speak  with 
some  severity  was  the  tendency  of  teachers  of  painting  in 
all  periods  to  impose  their  own  methods  upon  their  pupils, 
thus  encouraging  them  to  become  dependent  imitators,  and 
preventing  the  discovery  and  development  of  their  own 
individual  powers  of  observation  and  expression.  I  remem- 
ber how  proud  he  was  of  the  success  of  one  of  his  pupils 
whose  method  was  in  no  way  suggestive  of  his  own,  yet 
who  had  thanked  him  fervently  for  his  instruction  and  in- 
spiration, and  the  insight  into  his  own  special  qualities 
without  which  he  would  never  have  attained  self-realiza- 
tion. In  his  own  student  days  Weir  was  unconsciously 
directing  his  own  course  and  choosing  to  take  to  himself 
only  what  he  would  eventually  need. 

As  a  student  Alden  Weir  painted  genre,  still  life,  por- 
traits, and  landscapes,  and  only  his  very  earliest  works, 

[  *8  ] 


AN  APP^ECIA  TZOWi 

which  he  destroyed,  showed  the  influence  of  Gerome.  I 
have  seen  evidences  of  his  extraordinary  versatility  in  these 
formative  years;  a  charming  head  of  a  young  Breton  girl, 
a  group  of  French  children  burying  a  dead  bird,  delicately 
drawn  in  a  manner  suggestive  of  Boutet  de  Monvel,  a 
Vollon-like  still  life,  a  romantic  figure  composition  with 
light  and  shade  showing  the  influence  of  Italy,  finally  a 
bright  and  rather  tight  little  landscape  giving  promise 
with  its  joyous  intimacy  of  mood  of  the  great  landscape 
poems  of  later  periods.  The  handsome  young  American 
evidently  was  adaptable,  impressionable,  responsive  to 
many  influences  and  all  of  them  fine  ones.  But  he  had 
not  found  himself  in  those  days.  He  was  travelling  pleas- 
ant ways,  seeking  beauty  everywhere,  searching  for  him- 
self and  exerting  an  unconscious  direction  over  his  search, 
but  failing  yet  to  find  his  own  individual  expression. 

In  1876  he  went  to  Spain,  and  thenceforth  Velasquez 
became  his  God  of  painting.  It  was  only  after  seeing  Velas- 
quez that  Weir  really  caught  up  with  the  advances  made 
in  his  own  time  by  such  men  as  Whistler,  Fantin,  and 
Manet.  Returning  to  the  United  States  in  1877,  he  spent 

t  *9  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEI\ 

the  next  two  years  in  New  York  in  a  sumptuously  deco- 
rated studio  in  the  Benedict  Building.  It  was  then  that  he 
painted  "The  Muse  of  Music,"  a  very  handsome  and  well- 
painted  canvas  in  the  grand  manner,  formal  and  not  en- 
tirely sincere,  for  the  grand  manner  did  not  come  natu- 
rally to  Weir,  who  was  always  what  the  French  call  an 
"Intimist." 

In  1880  Weir  won  a  medal  in  the  Salon  and  went 
with  Bastien  to  Belgium.  In  the  summer  of  1881  he  went 
to  Holland  with  his  brother,  John  F.  Weir,  and  John  H. 
Twachtman.  This  was  the  beginning  of  the  intimate  friend- 
ship of  Weir  and  Twachtman.  From  all  accounts  it  was 
a  delightful  summer,  and  Weir  grew  to  reverence  Rem- 
brandt for  tone  and  poetry  and  Franz  Hals  for  his  bold 
mastery  of  medium,  and  as  never  before  to  love  land- 
scape motifs,  the  immense  skies  of  Holland  with  their 
ever  changing  and  never  failing  fascination  of  light.  In 
1883  Weir  was  again  in  Paris,  and  on  this  trip  he  was 
chiefly  interested  in  the  Impressionists,  becoming  so  con- 
vinced of  their  importance  that  he  purchased  many  of 
their  works  for  Mr.  Erwin  Davis,  who  had  commissioned 

[  20  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  TZOWi 

the  young  American  painter  to  buy  for  him  some  repre- 
sentative examples  by  the  contemporary  Frenchmen,  rely- 
ing upon  his  taste  and  his  already  celebrated  eye  for  true 
quality  in  works  of  art.  Fortunately,  through  Weir's  in- 
fluence, the  "Jean  d'Arc"  by  Bastien  and  the  "Woman 
with  Parrot"  and  "Boy  with  Sword"  by  Manet  passed 
from  the  Davis  collection  to  the  Metropolitan  Museum, 
where  they  are  monuments  to  the  wisdom  of  Weir,  and 
where  they  have  exerted  a  powerful  influence  in  the  de- 
velopment of  American  art.  By  this  time  Weir's  taste  was 
formed.  It  remained  for  him,  however,  to  work  out  his 
own  artistic  destiny  and  save  himself  from  the  quick- 
sands of  eclecticism. 

It  is  said  that  when  Weir  came  back  from  Paris  in 
1877  he  was  in  appearance,  in  taste,  and  in  manner  a 
charming  Parisian.  Although  the  years  abroad  had  been 
for  him  a  period  of  great  inspiration  and  enjoyment,  and 
although  Europe  had  given  him  his  education  as  an  art- 
ist, yet  he  never  seems  to  have  even  seriously  consid- 
ered the  idea  of  living  outside  of  his  own  country  and, 
after  his  return  in  1883,  he  married  and  settled  down 

[ 21  ] 


JULIAN^  ALDSN  WEI%^ 

on  a  farm  in  Connecticut,  exhibiting  pictures  with  regu- 
larity in  New  York  and  Boston  and  becoming  the  most 
American  of  Americans.  He  made  hosts  of  friends  with  his 
enchanting  smile  and  his  genial  sportsmanship.  One  knew 
that  under  the  surface  there  was  rugged  manliness  which 
could  be  aggressive,  but  one  knew  also  of  the  kindness 
and  tenderness  of  the  man  and  his  high  ideal  for  art  and 
conduct.  He  was  soon  elected  a  member  of  the  Tile  Club, 
which  included  among  many  of  New  York's  most  repre- 
sentative men  in  the  various  arts,  William  M.  Chase, 
Frank  D.  Millet,  Edwin  A.  Abbey,  F.  Hopkinson  Smith, 
and  Augustus  Saint-Gaudens.  During  this  period  his  style 
was  still  in  the  process  of  being  formed  through  the 
knowledge  gained  by  constant  experiment.  He  knew 
what  he  wanted  to  say.  The  American  portraits  and  land- 
scapes which  he  wished  to  paint  were  already  in  his  mind's 
eye,  but  at  the  exhibitions  during  the  8o's  Weir  was  rep- 
resented by  pictures  which  won  the  praise  of  the  more 
discerning  critics  for  their  quality  rather  than  for  their 
originality.  He  revealed  what  he  had  learned  in  Europe, 
and  his  aim  seemed  to  be,  what  with  Chase  it  always  was, 

[   "  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/O^ 

to  show  America  la  bonne  peinture^  the  intrinsic  beauty 
of  surface  obtainable  in  oil  painting  which  ought  to  be 
cherished  for  its  own  sake.  It  was  what  America  needed 
at  the  time,  this  emphasis  of  the  young  men  upon  art  for 
art's  sake,  this  insistence  that  in  art,  subject,  however  pre- 
tentious, is  of  no  consequence  without  style  which  may 
dignify  the  slightest  subject.  Weir's  still  life  of  this  period 
is  as  distinguished  as  that  of  Vollon  and  superior  to 
what  Chase  and  Emil  Carlsen  were  doing  then.  Collectors 
are  proud  to-day  if  they  have  kept  the  luscious  paint- 
ings of  roses  arbitrarily  relieved  against  dark  backgrounds, 
which  they  probably  acquired  without  due  appreciation 
of  their  historical  importance.  These  things  possess  so 
delicious  and  unctuous  a  pigment,  so  charmingly  render- 
ing their  subjects  with  especial  regard  to  richness  of  tone 
and  texture,  that  they  would  make  Weir  sure  of  a  repu- 
tation as  a  painter's  painter  even  if  he  had  not  gone  on 
to  greater  achievements.  While  America  was  learning  to 
recognize  "quality"  in  painting  through  just  such  mas- 
terly works  as  these  by  Weir,  the  young  painter  himself 
was  experimenting  with  new  methods,  new  ideas,  and  a 

[  23  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEI\ 

new  palette.  The  portraits  which  he  exhibited  at  this  time 
indicate  the  chosen  direction  of  his  progress,  but  they 
were  considered,  and  correctly  so,  inferior  to  his  still  life. 
They  showed  his  desire  to  emulate  the  wonderful  dull 
blacks  of  Franz  Hals  and  Manet,  and  their  even  more 
wonderful  flesh  tones  kept  gray  and  flat  by  a  diffusion  of 
enveloping  atmosphere  rather  than  accented  and  modelled 
in  arbitrary  light  and  shade.  But  Weir  missed  the  magic 
of  these  secrets  known  only  to  Hals  and  Manet,  and  to- 
day his  early  portraits  seem  rather  dull  and  austere. 

The  turning-point  in  Weir's  artistic  life  came  in  189 1, 
when  at  the  Blakeslee  Galleries  he  showed  for  the  first 
time  a  collection  of  landscapes  in  high  key  of  color  and 
with  the  transparent  shadows  of  the  French  Luminarists. 
A  second  important  landmark  was  the  exhibition  at  the 
American  Art  Galleries  in  1893  of  works  by  Weir  and 
Twachtman,  together  with  pictures  by  Monet  and  Bes- 
nard,  which  were  included  for  purposes  of  explanation. 
The  newspaper  critics,  who  had  considerable  influence  at 
that  time,  applauded  the  celebrated  Frenchmen  so  that 
their  pictures  were  acquired  by  a  few  daring  collectors, 

[  2+  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/OJ^ 

but  these  same  critics  lacked  the  courage  to  recommend 
the  American  disciples  whose  more  conservative  pictures 
failed  to  find  many  who  were  bold  enough  to  either  pur- 
chase or  praise.  Monet  was  purchased  as  a  curiosity  be- 
cause of  his  foreign  vogue.  Twachtman,  even  more  of  a 
curiosity  than  Monet  in  his  method,  was  utterly  incom- 
prehensible and,  being  an  American,  negligible.  It  must 
be  remembered  that  during  this  period  Americans  were  so 
much  obsessed  by  foreign  paintings  that  they  were  inclined 
to  be  dubious  whether  any  art,  good  or  at  least  original, 
could  come  out  of  their  own  country. 

Weir  was  fond  of  telling  a  story  about  one  of  the  few 
sales  recorded  at  this  exhibition.  A  certain  collector  over 
whom  Weir  had  an  influence,  but  whose  admiration  for 
Weir's  work  did  not  extend  to  Twachtman,  was  finally 
persuaded  to  buy  one  of  Twachtman's  landscapes  which 
Weir  had  pronounced  great  and  worth  its  weight  in  gold. 
Weir  would  not  consent  to  sell  this  collector  a  picture  of 
his  unless  he  also  bought  an  example  of  the  art  of  his  friend, 
whose  work  he  insisted  was  finer  than  his  own.  The  result 
was  that  Weir  selected  a  picture  for  the  collection,  and  the 

[  2s  3 


JUL/A^ALDSN  WEI^ 

collector  condescended  to  humor  him  and  acquired  it. 
Proud  of  his  purchases  and  glad  to  appear  to  the  two 
artists  as  a  daring  patron  of  their  adventurous  method,  the 
collector  invited  both  artists  to  his  house  to  dinner.  Weir 
arrived  late  and  found  Twachtman  ill  at  ease  and  dejected. 
At  the  first  opportunity  he  inquired  the  cause.  "My  God," 
growled  Twachtman,  "  have  n't  you  noticed?  They  have 
hung  my  picture  upside  down." 

Weir  and  Twachtman  had  become  zealous  converts  to 
this  new  style  of  painting;  the  application  to  canvas  of 
broken  colors  which,  by  the  demonstrations  of  Monet,  had 
been  proved  capable  of  recombination,  not  by  mixture  on 
the  palette  but  by  juxtaposition,  fresh  from  the  tubes,  so 
as  to  give  a  closer  suggestion  of  light.  Both  had  promptly 
set  to  work  to  study  the  great  Out  of  Doors  with  new 
eyes.  While  still  painting  and  exhibiting  tonal  pictures  of 
most  discreet  conservatism,  Weir  and  Twachtman  were 
preparing  to  apply  Monet's  method  to  American  subjects, 
and  to  carry  it  on  with  modifications  which  would  make 
it  more  adaptable  to  individuality  of  expression  and  more 
amenable  to  beauty.  No  one  else,  perhaps  not  even  the 

[  26  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/O^ 

artists  themselves,  realized  the  importance  of  the  steps  they 
were  taking.  These  American  pupils  were  to  surpass  their 
French  masters  by  making  their  method  more  flexible  and 
more  spiritual,  while  retaining  all  the  truth  and  all  the 
vitality.  But  the  first  experiments  were  not  impressive.  In 
fact,  Weir's  earliest  effects  of  sunshine  were  often  weak, 
suggesting  a  sun  trying  to  come  out  of  a  fog.  The  tonal 
harmonies  were  charming,  however.  The  soft  colors  sug- 
gested to  the  contemporary  critics  the  qualities  of  pastel. 
Weir  had  won  a  reputation  as  an  accomplished  painter 
of  still  life,  so  the  critics  were  on  their  guard  against  any 
hasty  accusations  of  incompetence.  But  people  said  —  yes, 
even  some  artists  who  should  have  known  better — "Too 
bad;  another  good  man  gone  wrong,"  and  the  critics 
damned  with  faint  praise,  and  only  one  or  two  seemed  to 
realize  the  tremendous  importance  of  this  forward  march 
by  two  gallant  spirits  not  content  to  stand  still.  A  little 
later  Childe  Hassam  and  Theodore  Robinson  came  back 
from  France  with  sparkling  rainbow  palettes  and  began  to 
paint  with  a  greater  facility  in  the  new  style,  an  earlier 
attainment  of  their  full  powers  than  the  early  efforts  of 

[  27  ] 


JULIA^  ALD8N  WE 77^ 

Weir  and  even  of  Twachtman.  But  the  two  great  Ameri- 
can painters  of  spiritualized  naturalism  proceeded  on  their 
own  way,  showing  the  results  of  their  study  of  Monet,  but 
unlike  Hassam,  their  intention  to  depart  from  his  method 
and  to  adapt  it  to  their  own  ends.  What  matters  it  now 
that  those  early  landscapes  of  Weir  were  loose  without 
much  strength,  transparent  in  the  shadows  but  without 
much  light  ?  The  important  fact  is  that  they  were  great  art 
in  the  making.  And  they  intrigue  us !  We  are  conscious  of 
something  very  personal  and  somehow  very  original  trying 
to  get  itself  said  in  a  language  not  yet  entirely  familiar. 
Occasionally  there  is  a  wonderful  work  of  art  full  of  a  touch- 
ing poetry  and  of  vividly  remembered  atmosphere ;  of  im- 
pressions absorbed  in  moments  of  sensitive  response  and 
transferred  to  canvas  with  an  art  which  seems,  as  yet,  more 
a  matter  of  lucky  inspiration  than  of  confident  mastery  of 
method. 

I  have  a  small  landscape  of  about  this  time,  a  country 
lane  in  Spring  with  a  glad  sun  shining  and  a  hint  of  bird- 
song  in  the  sweet,  still  air.  There  are  radiant  pinks  and 
tender  greens,  an  endearing  touch,  a  lyric  charm.  Usually 

[ 28  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/O^i 

the  sun  in  the  early  Weir  landscapes  did  not  shine  so  well. 
But  they  are  invariably  full  of  dimly  lighted  or  partially 
shadowed  places  which  are  marvels  of  tone.  It  certainly  is 
not  difficult  for  us  now  to  see  the  great  Weir  emerging  out 
of  these  lovely  pictures  which  in  their  day  were  accounted 
failures.  Some  critics  had  faith  in  them.  Clarence  Cook 
wrote  in  1891,  "Weir  sees  as  the  Venetians  and  Velasquez 
rather  than  as  Raphael,  Diirer,  and  Ingres,  with  their  hard, 
precise,  and  analytic  eyes.  And  these  new  works  show  no 
violent  change.  They  are  the  logical  outcome  of  Weir's 
artistic  tendency  since  his  return  from  Europe.  Only  the 
has  changed.  The  man  is  on  his  way."  Here  at  least 
was  one  critic  who  saw  that  Weir  was  approaching,  if  in- 
deed he  had  not  already  arrived  at,  that  starting-point  of  all 
the  art  that  is  truly  great — when  the  method  is  discovered, 
and  occasionally  the  scope  and  aim  of  it  realized,  whereby 
one's  own  innermost  individual  Something  may  be  given  to 
the  world  to  add  to  the  sum  of  the  world's  treasure. 


[  29  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEIT^ 


II 

SO,  after  ten  years  of  experiment  and  cultivation,  the 
art  of  J.  Alden  Weir  came  at  last  to  fruition.  He  was 
destined  to  say  in  his  chosen  way  something  that  needed 
to  be  said  about  his  native  land,  and  to  say  it  more  exqui- 
sitely, with  greater  delicacy  of  feeling  and  distinction  of 
style,  than  lay  within  the  powers  of  any  other  American. 
The  large,  formal  figure  compositions,  the  still  life,  rich 
in  texture  and  very  personal,  the  sombre,  solid  portraits, 
and  such  masterly  landscapes,  in  the  manner  of  Barbizon, 
as  "The  Old  Connecticut  Farm,"  were  only  practice  for 
the  ultimate  themes.  When  he  had  thoroughly  mastered 
his  craft  and  learned  from  experience  and  won  for  himself 
a  hearing  and  established  a  reputation,  he  then  delib- 
erately turned  his  back  on  everything  he  had  done,"  dis- 
regarding the  material  success  which  could  have  been  his 
for  the  asking  had  he  continued  along  more  traditional 
lines,  and  broke  ground  in  untilled  fields.  Chalky,  per- 
haps, and  a  little  weak,  the  earliest  landscapes  in  high  key, 
yet  they  were  eloquent  nevertheless  of  the  great  American 

[  30  ] 


AN  APP7{BC/A  T/OWi 

painter  who  had  finally  found  himself  and  who  could  be 
counted  upon  for  an  ever  increasing  mastery  of  his  method 
and  for  works  of  the  most  personal,  inimitable  artistry  and 
the  most  sensitive  and  beautiful  emotions.  Having  discov- 
ered and  attained  to  his  own  predestined  style,  his  work 
became,  for  the  first  time,  the  spontaneous  natural  expres- 
sion of  his  own  life  and  character.  Thereafter  his  pictures 
form  links  of  record  of  a  rare  personality  devoted  with 
single-hearted  sincerity  to  the  expression  of  the  simplici- 
ties of  life,  the  finer  every-day  experiences  of  which  are 
revealed  only  to  spirits  of  singular  sweetness.  The  rare  in- 
timacy of  the  pictures  of  Weir,  their  true  delight  in  little 
things  and  familiar  surroundings,  their  wholesome  joy  in 
life's  untroubled  hours  of  serenity  and  health  and  genuine 
contentment,  remind  me  of  Chardin,  the  difference  being 
that  the  Frenchman's  special  pleasure  was  in  the  domestic 
interior,  whereas  Weir's  was  out  of  doors,  on  the  farm,  in 
the  fields  and  woods,  and  at  the  hospitable  hearth  only  after 
nightfall.  But  both  men  wrote  in  terms  of  exquisite  tone, 
color,  and  atmosphere  their  appreciation  of  the  quiet  joys 
of  just  being  alive  from  day  to  day,  with  a  chance  to  observe 

[  31  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEI\ 

how  lovely  things  really  are  if  we  know  how  to  see.  Ve- 
lasquez had  taught  him  how  to  see,  how  to  find  the  ele- 
ments of  beauty  anywhere  and  to  make  for  himself,  by 
means  of  exquisite  craftsmanship,  true  patterns  of  form 
and  line  and  texture,  and  of  colors  harmonized  in  light 
and  air;  a  world  of  enchanting  realities.  It  is,  however,  of 
Chardin's  sensitively  chosen  scale  of  values,  particularly  his 
gamut  of  lovely  grays  and  tawny  tones,  that  Weir's  palette 
reminds  me;  of  Chardin  in  the  portraits  and  still  life  and 
of  Corot  in  the  landscapes.  Chardin,  Corot,  and  Weir,  they 
all  had  an  intimacy  of  spirit  which  makes  their  art  particu- 
larly ingratiating.  For  them  art  became  a  part  of  their  own 
lives  and  their  way  of  conveying  to  others  their  satisfaction 
in  life.  From  the  time  when  Weir  first  began  to  exhibit  his 
paintings  in  the  new  method  there  is  no  better  way  of 
knowing  his  life  than  through  his  art. 

Very  personal  also  are  the  landscapes  which  Weir  painted 
on  his  own  farms.  He  spent  six  or  seven  months  of  each 
year  in  Connecticut,  where  he  owned  two  country  places, 
and  where  he  hunted  and  fished  in  season.  He  would  spend 
alternate  summers  at  Windham  and  Branchville.  The  place 

[  32  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/OWi 

at  Windham  is  an  estate  of  three  hundred  and  fifty  acres, 
and  has  been  in  Mrs.  Weir's  family  for  one  hundred  and  fifty 
years.  A  ball  in  honor  of  Lafayette  was  once  given  in  this 
house.  Each  generation  of  Mrs.  Weir's  family  has  added  to 
the  original  structure,  until  now  it  is  large  and  rambling 
and  full  of  quaint  charm.  There  are  ancient  forest  trees 
round  about,  which  many  of  us  know  in  the  landscapes  not 
only  of  Weir,  but  of  his  friend,  Emil  Carlsen,  who  lived 
nearby  for  many  summers.  The  other  place  at  Branchville  is 
of  two  hundred  acres,  heavily  forested  with  fine  old  timber. 
The  old  house  has  an  immense  living-room  with  an  old  oak 
floor,  and  its  windows  are  quaint  Dutch  ones  which  Weir 
brought  from  Holland.  Once,  when  a  party  of  friends  joined 
Weir  for  a  week  of  fishing  in  the  spring,  three  cords  of  wood 
were  burned  in  two  days  in  the  two  vast  fireplaces  at  oppo- 
site ends  of  this  room.  Six-foot  logs  are  offered  up,  and  the 
sacrificial  blaze  is  a  roaring  one.  It  is  pleasant  to  think  of 
Weir's  handsome,  silvered  head  in  the  firelight,  his  eyes 
merry  with  anecdote  or  softened  with  sentiment.  He  was  a 
delightful  story  teller  and  a  great  listener  to  the  stories  of 
others.  His  big  laugh  was  of  a  kind  that  warmed  the  heart. 

[  33  ] 


JUL/A^ALDSN  WEI\ 

His  mind  was  alert  and  active,  keen  and  shrewd  in  criti- 
cism, yet  generous  and  tolerant,  the  mind  of  a  big  man.  He 
loved  animals,  especially  dogs.  It  would  be  hard  to  find  pic- 
tures more  intimate  in  their  charm  than  the  water  colors  he 
painted  of  his  own  hunting  dogs  asleep  around  his  hearth 
after  a  hard  day  in  the  woods.  Fishing  was  a  passion  with 
Weir.  Recently  I  was  looking  over  his  scrap-books,  and 
most  of  the  press  clippings  were  not  about  art  at  all,  but 
about  "The  Elusive  Trout,"  "Beguiling  the  Tom  Cod," 
"The  Sensitive  Salmon."  It  may  seem  rather  surpris- 
ing that  among  his  landscapes  we  find  few  records  of  the 
sport  he  loved  so  well;  no  pictures  of  little  rivers  where 
he  waded  hip  high,  or  of  shadowy  pools  into  which  he 
dropped  his  tempting  flies !  Evidently  he  felt  that  art  had 
no  more  to  do  with  sport  than  with  politics  and  business. 
It  was  his  life  work  to  search  for  beauty  and  then  to  express 
it.  Sport  was  his  relaxation,  into  which  he  could  plunge 
with  whole-hearted  gusto,  leaving  art  behind.  There  are 
two  pictures  entitled  "The  Fishing  Party,"  both  very 
lovely  landscapes  with  figures  enveloped  in  silvery  sun- 
shine, but  they  are  for  connoisseurs  of  rare  beauty — not 

[  34  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/O^ 

for  sportsmen.  He  was  fond  of  telling  stories,  but  not  on 
canvas.  I  do  not  remember  a  single  story-telling  picture 
from  his  hand. 

One  of  the  most  charming  and  one  of  the  most  com- 
pletely representative  of  Weir's  paintings  is  "The  Donkey 
Ride,"  showing  his  daughters,  Dorothy  and  Cora,  when 
they  were  little  girls,  mounted  on  dainty  and  demure  gray 
donkeys  against  a  beautiful  background  of  hillside  and 
summer  sky.  From  a  decorative  standpoint  this  picture  is 
a  thing  of  extraordinary  loveliness.  There  is  no  modelling 
and  no  atmosphere,  for  everything  has  been  deliberately  kept 
flat  to  convey  the  joy  of  a  mellow  old  tapestry.  The  well- 
worn  leather  of  the  old  saddle  and  the  rough  hair  of  the 
donkey  are  realistic  in  effect  and  tempt  us  to  touch  them, 
so  wonderful  is  the  "  vraisemblance,"  but  these  textures  are 
lovely  for  their  own  sake  and,  although  each  bit  suggests 
vividly  the  character  of  what  it  represents,  yet  there  is  an 
abstract  beauty  which  ties  every  part  together.  Charming 
of  course  as  a  poem  on  all  happy  American  childhood  in 
the  country,  yet  this  picture  is  chiefly  valuable  perhaps  be- 
cause of  its  design,  which  is  as  fine  as  those  by  "  old  mas- 

[  35  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEI\ 

ters"  of  the  Far  East  or  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when 
Japanesque  caprice  rather  than  classic  convention  ruled. 
Often,  by  the  way,  we  are  reminded  of  the  spirit  of  the 
eighteenth  century  in  England.  As  Royal  Cortissoz  has 
observed,  "  There  is  the  old  English  flavour  of  those  win- 
some color  prints,  'The  Cries  of  London,'  in  such  a  pic- 
ture as  'The  Flower  Girl' — a  canvas  which  cheers  and 
charms  us  like  a  quaint  and  ever  refreshing  song  of  long 
ago." 

Scarcely  less  adorable  than  "The  Donkey  Ride"  is  the 
other  donkey  picture  entitled  "Visiting  Neighbors,"  repre- 
senting Cora  Weir  tying  her  donkey  to  a  garden  gate  at 
about  noontime  of  a  summer's  day.  Whereas  "The  Donkey 
Ride"  was  not  only  a  donkey  ride  but  a  decoration,  this 
picture  is  first  and  last  just  a  vivid  glimpse  of  the  real  world 
at  Branchville,  Connecticut,  and  of  a  little  girl  who  had 
a  good  time  with  that  particular  donkey,  and  who  used  to 
tie  it  to  that  particular  rustic  fence  which  her  daddy  had 
noticed  took  on  just  that  grayish  violet  tone  at  that  hour 
of  the  sunflecked  green  midday.  The  quivering  joyous 
languor  of  the  hour  is  conveyed  in  the  artist's  most  mas- 

[  36  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/O^ 

terly  manner.  The  tree  trunks  are  rough  and  beautifully 
true,  the  texture  of  the  bark  suggested  in  striated  brush 
strokes  of  violet  and  brown.  The  drowsy  gray  donkey  and 
the  little  girl  are  immersed  in  sun  and  air.  As  the  little  girl 
would  say,  "It's  the  good  old  summer  time."  There  is  a 
monotony  of  content  everywhere.  How  it  stills  the  soul  to 
feel  a  little  breeze  in  one's  hair,  to  stretch  one's  body  till 
it  thrills,  to  play  with  children  and  animals,  to  be  a  child 
again  and  follow  the  lure  of  one's  own  caprice  in  the  great 
outdoors!  Richard  Hovey,  poet  of  comradeship  and  the 
open  sky,  has  put  the  mood  into  living  language: 

"O  good,  damp,  smell  of  the  ground, 
O  rough,  sweet,  bark  of  the  trees, 
O  clear,  sharp,  cracklings  of  sound, 
0  life  that 's  a  thrill  and  abound 
With  the  vigor  of  boyhood  and  morning 
And  the  noon-time' 's  rapture  of  ease! 
Was  there  ever  a  weary  heart  in  the  world, 
A  lag  in  the  body's  urge 
Or  a  flag  to  the  spirit's  wings  ? 
Did  a  mans  heart  ever  break 
For  a  lost  hope's  sake? 
For  here  there  's  such  lilt  in  the  quiet 
And  such  calm  in  the  quiver  of  things'* 

[  37  ] 


JUL/AJ^  ALD8N  WEI\ 

Back  of  the  old  farm-house  at  Branchville  is  the  rocky 
hillside  which  Alden  Weir  has  immortalized  in  that  epic 
picture  of  the  American  farmer  amid  soil  and  sky  entitled, 
"Plowing  for  Buckwheat."  Weir  did  not  want  us  to  think 
that  the  frame  for  this  picture  would  contain  all  that  was 
worth  transcribing.  He  wished  us  to  understand  that  his 
viewpoint  was  more  or  less  unstudied,  that  what  he  painted 
was  a  hastily  selected  part  of  the  big  world  of  cloud-shine 
and  old  trees  and  fallow,  fertile  fields  which  stretched  im- 
measurably above  and  beyond  the  borders  of  his  canvas. 
This  largeness  of  nature  worship  and  this  unconscious 
function  he  performed  of  painting  American  epic  poetry 
accounts  for  what  has  been  called  a  carelessness  on  Weir's 
part  in  composing  his  landscapes.  We  have  seen  that  in 
"The  Donkey  Ride"  he  could  satisfy  those  who  require 
a  pattern  in  a  picture,  but  the  essential  Weir  was  more 
concerned  with  expressing  the  big  though  simple  emotions 
which  nature  gave  him,  than  with  the  patterns  which  could 
be  arranged  out  of  her  raw  materials.  If  you  are  a  lover 
of  open  American  hill  country,  not  the  culminating  majesty 
of  mountain  peaks,  nor  the  perfection  of  paradise  valleys, 

[  38  ] 


AN  APPT{ECIA  T/OJVi 

but  just  nice  livable,  lovable  farm  land,  neither  too  opulent 
nor  too  austere,  then  you  will  enjoy  yourself  in  the  land- 
scapes of  Weir.  The  season  is  usually  summer,  the  hour 
morning  or  approaching  noon,  with  overhead  light  in  a 
pale  sky.  In  the  "Plowing  for  Buckwheat"  great,  billowy 
clouds  are  crisply  accented  against  the  azure  in  silvered 
brilliancy.  A  drowsy  heat  pervades  the  air.  It  feels  good 
to  drop  down  on  some  sweet-smelling  hay  under  a  friendly 
tree  and  look  up.  An  imperceptible  breeze  stirs  the  upper 
branches.  The  distant  woods  are  mellowed  by  travelling 
shadows.  It  is  pleasant  to  watch  the  slow,  brown  oxen,  the 
sunbaked  hillside,  and  the  farmer  who  turns  from  his  plow 
with  a  friendly  "how-d'  do."  In  "The  Fishing  Party," 
the  sun  under  which  we  stand  seems  to  silver  the  ferny  fore- 
ground, the  sky  so  subtly  modulated  in  key  from  the  hori- 
zon up,  and  the  distant  woods  beyond  the  open  fields. 
Across  a  little  bridge  pass  the  white-clad  figures  of  friends 
going  a-fishing.  If  only  one  could  hear  the  hum  of  insect 
life  and  of  incidental,  unimportant  human  voices,  the  sen- 
sation of  any  sunny  summer  day  on  a  farm  would  be  com- 
plete. And  Weir  was  no  more  true  in  recording  day  than 

[  39  ] 


JUL/A^ALDSN  WEIT^ 

in  remembering  night.  He  fascinates  with  the  exact  effect 
of  a  spooky  darkness  as  fitfully  glimpsed  in  the  flare  of  a 
rusty  old  lantern. 

In  painting  people  instead  of  places,  it  is  fascinating  to 
see  Weir's  mind  concerned  with  different  problems  and 
expressing  beauty  and  character  with  a  technical  method 
of  combed  lines  and  varied  surfaces  for  conveying  a  sense 
of  flesh  and  fabric  under  diffused  light,  which  is  perhaps 
even  more  individual  and  distinctive  than  the  short  stroke, 
the  embroidering  touch  employed  so  wonderfully  for  the 
landscapes.  In  the  many  paintings  in  oil  and  water  color 
celebrating  the  charm  of  children,  one  is  led  to  believe 
that  Weir's  genius  was  never  more  inspired  than  in  the 
interpretation  of  childhood.  Who  can  forget  the  sweet  and 
demure  little  girl  whose  kitten  slumbers  in  her  gently  folded 
arms?  This  picture  deserves  to  rank  among  the  great  por- 
traits of  children.  Even  Sargent's  "Beatrice  and  the  Bird 
Cage"  is  not  more  beautiful  than  the  "Little  Lizzie  Lynch" 
of  Weir.  Sargent  became  tender  and  reverent  in  painting 
children,  but  when  they  grew  up  he  saw  them  in  his 
worldly  way,  wisely  and  without  sentiment.  Weir's  human- 

[  4°  ] 


AN  APPT{ECIA  T/O^ 

ity  did  not  stop  with  children.  His  imagination  was  deeply 
moved  by  the  old-fashioned  American  girl  as  he  loved  to 
think  of  her,  in  her  sensitive,  radiant  youth,  full  of  her 
sweet  contradictions,  free  and  frank  and  fine  of  body  and 
soul,  the  comrade  and  playmate  of  man,  yet  more  puritan 
than  pagan,  with  an  inarticulate  reserve  coming  up  at  the 
first  hint  of  sentiment,  to  conceal  depths  of  dear,  mysteri- 
ous, feminine  emotion.  All  this  we  seem  to  know  about 
Weir's  young  American  woman  without,  of  course,  ever 
stopping  to  analyze  her,  which  would  be  destructive  of  the 
charm  the  artist  makes  us  feel  in  her  presence.  Weir  was 
the  inspired  interpreter  of  a  chosen  American  type  that  is 
marked  by  a  penetrating  sort  of  refinement  which  he  rev- 
erenced and  to  which  he  could  impart  a  charm  through 
the  chivalric  graciousness  and  the  hellenic  joyousness  of 
his  own  mind.  This  refinement  which  he  saw  and  sought 
to  express  was  not  at  all  a  matter  of  class  or  race,  although 
the  New  England  woman  of  old  Anglo-Saxon  lineage 
was  a  favorite  theme.  In  the  portrait  of  Miss  de  L.  at  the 
Corcoran  Gallery  in  Washington,  we  feel  Weir's  interest 
and  respect  for  a  type  which  might  be  called  middle  class 

[  4*  ] 


JULIAN  ALD8N  WEFE^ 

European.  We  rather  think  that  she  is  a  Jewess  of  European 
parentage.  Perhaps  she  is  a  dressmaker  or  manages  a  small 
shop.  She  has  been  good  looking,  but  years  of  drudgery 
and  disappointment  have  exacted  their  toll.  She  is  a  brave 
woman.  So  it  is  always  with  the  types  chosen  by  Weir. 
He  sets  us  wondering  about  them.  The  men  also  are  in- 
terpreted with  profound  sympathy  and  understanding,  their 
physical  beings  so  suggested  that  we  feel  their  living  pres- 
ence in  the  pigments.  The  portrait  of  his  brother,  Colonel 
Weir,  is  a  masterpiece  and,  as  the  subject  requires,  is  rug- 
gedly painted  in  a  style  which  would  have  done  injustice 
to  his  gentler  sitters.  And  the  portrait  of  the  great  poet- 
painter,  Ryder — what  a  noble  head!  We  know  that  this 
man  is  a  genius,  and  that  he  lives  in  a  world  of  his  own 
invention.  Weir  was  Ryder's  guardian  angel.  Some  day 
there  will  be  a  tale  to  tell,  a  revelation  of  all  that  the  great- 
hearted Weir  was  to  poor  Ryder,  and  it  will  be  the  basis 
for  a  most  beautiful  legend.  No  two  men  could  have  been 
more  different.  There  was  never  anything  literary  or  mys- 
tical about  Weir,  and  yet  he  understood  Ryder's  poet  soul, 
and  in  his  portrait  we  share  his  reverence  for  the  superb 

[  +2  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/O^i 

intellect  and  greatness  which  animated  the  lonely  dreamer 
whose  eccentric  personality  and  shabby  appearance  might 
have  attracted  mere  curiosity  and  pity  from  the  casual 
observer. 

Perhaps  the  finest  of  Weir's  many  interpretations  of 
feminine  character  is  "The  Gentlewoman  "  of  the  National 
Gallery  in  Washington — a  person  of  rather  austere  intel- 
lectual type,  one  might  assume  at  first  glance;  yet  soon 
enough  we  recognize  that  she  is  really  a  gentle,  gray  lady 
whose  meditations  are  sound  and  sweet.  It  is  delightful  to 
remember  her,  the  simple  lines  and  colors  of  her  dress,  the 
unobtrusive  dignity  of  her  hands,  the  smouldering  light  in 
her  downcast  eyes,  as  of  spent  moments  and  bright  memo- 
ries. With  infinite  sympathy  and  admiration  her  youth  has 
been  revealed  in  the  very  embarrassment  of  taking  leave  of 
her  for  always.  Yet  we  see  that  the  art  of  living  is  ever  at 
her  command,  and  that  the  years  will  add  to  her  exquisite 
distinction.  Hers  is  a  personality  before  which  we  stand 
uncovered,  introduced  by  a  very  courteous  gentleman  who 
knows  her  worth,  and  whose  praise  is  as  fine  a  tribute  to 
Woman  as  ever  an  age  of  chivalry  could  boast.  The  man 

[  43  ] 


JULIA^  ALD8N  WEI\ 

who  created  this  portrait  was  not  merely  an  accomplished 
painter;  he  was  a  great  artist  and  inspired  by  a  great  ideal. 

If  "The  Gentlewoman"  is  Weir's  masterpiece  in  the 
idealized  naturalism  of  his  figure  paintings,  the  "  Pan  and 
the  Wolf"  may  be  chosen  (it  was  his  own  choice)  as  his 
most  important  landscape.  Certainly  it  is  the  most  im- 
pressive, because  of  its  classic  grandeur  of  design.  The 
artist  seems  to  have  said  to  himself,  "  Now,  suppose  I  try 
a  classic  landscape  as  Corot  would  have  painted  had  he 
lived  a  little  longer."  And  so — there  is  the  same  glamour 
of  twilight  on  the  edge  of  a  wood,  of  color  lingering  in 
the  western  sky,  of  the  illusions  that  linger  in  a  green  glade 
silvered  in  dew-drenched  dimness,  of  antique  figures  in  a 
dreamy  dusk.  But  now  there  is  added  pale  air  that  trembles, 
transparent  shadows  on  the  rocks  and  jewelled  gleams 
woven  through  the  mystery  of  dark  and  light  to  make  the 
memory  of  oncoming  night  not  only  more  beautiful,  but 
more  true.  To  challenge  comparison  with  Corot  was  a  dar- 
ing thing  to  do,  yet  the  comparison  was  inevitable,  nor 
does  Weir  suffer  by  it.  The  Frenchman  may  have  been  the 
greater  master  of  design  and  the  more  perfect  painter,  but 

[  4+  ] 


AN  APP^ECIA  T/O^C 

he  confined  himself  to  a  much  narrower  range.  Weir  was 
incapable  of  repeating  the  "Pan  and  the  Wolf"  as  Corot 
repeated  over  and  over  his  dance  of  dryads,  or  of  Italian- 
ized shepherds  in  sylvan  settings,  where  every  tree  is  in  its 
proper  place.  The  two  men  were  most  alike,  and  most  spon- 
taneous and  delightful,  when  they  were  content  to  repre- 
sent the  familiar  scenes  they  lived  in  and  learned  to  love. 
Corot  pleases  me  most  in  his  bright  little  paymges  inti- 
mes  of  sunny  country  roads  and  his  well-loved  lake  near 
Ville  d'Avray.  It  seems  to  me  that  it  is  not  the  Weir  of 
the  "Pan  and  the  Wolf,"  but  of  such  landscapes  as  "The 
Old  Connecticut  Farm,"  the  "High  Pasture," the  "Visit- 
ing Neighbors,"  "The  Fishing  Party,"  the  "Plowing 
for  Buckwheat,"  "The  Spreading  Oak,"  the  "Birches 
at  Windham,"  the  "Building  a  Dam,"  "The  Hunter's 
Moon,"  the  "Afternoon  by  the  Pond,"  and  the  "Wood- 
land Rocks,"  who  will  live  forever  as  the  poet-painter  who 
sang  the  song  of  spring  and  summer  and  autumn  in  the 
American  countryside,  the  song  of  American  sunshine,  of 
sweet  American  breezes  rippling  through  summer  leafage, 
the  song  of  American  skies,  and  of  New  England  fields,  for 

[  45  ] 


JUL/A^ALDSN  WEI\ 

all  their  stones,  and  of  friendly  woods,  not  in  spite  of  but 
because  of  their  slender  second  growth.  Weir  loved  nature 
too  much  in  particular  places  to  alter  the  aspect  of  his 
familiar  world.  If  an  ideal  loveliness  is  in  his  landscapes,  it 
is  the  idealism  again  of  the  man's  own  nature  expressing 
its  joy  in  reality  through  a  magic  of  beautiful  painting. 

Weir's  wonderful  versatility  and  courage  for  new  ex- 
periments, the  adventurous  spirit  of  the  man,  continued 
into  his  old  age,  and  it  is  a  joy  to  record  that,  in  many 
ways,  his  latest  pictures  are  his  best.  There  seemed  to  be 
an  ever  increasing  mastery  in  his  method  of  solving  each 
problem.  Never  before  had  he  been  more  certain  to  achieve 
beauty  of  texture  and  solidity  of  form,  evanescence  of  light 
and  concealment  of  labor.  The  "Knitting"  of  19 18  has 
exquisite  transitions  of  light  and  the  most  enchanting 
tones.  The  modelling  achieves  on  a  flat  surface  and  with- 
out apparent  effort  a  perfect  realization  of  weight  as  well 
as  of  form.  The  drawing  is  profoundly  sensitive  and  express- 
ive of  the  subject,  a  wholesome  American  girl  day-dreaming 
as  she  knits  her  helmet  of  gray  wool  for  the  boy  who  will 
fight  for  her  rather  more  than  for  Democracy.  In  spite  of 

[  46  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/O^C 

fatal  illness  and  failing  strength,  J.  Alden  Weir,  in  this 
affectionate  tribute  to  the  American  woman  in  the  war, 
did  his  bit  with  all  his  accustomed  genius,  nobility,  and 
charm. 

On  the  8th  of  December,  19 19,  Weir  died  of  heart  fail- 
ure after  a  protracted  illness,  through  which  he  had  been 
inexhaustibly  cheerful,  patient,  and  productive.  He  will 
always  symbolize  for  me  in  his  life  and  express  for  me  in 
his  art  the  wholesome  sagacity  of  choice,  the  nervous  com- 
plexity of  purpose,  the  high  unformulated  ideals,  the  virile 
simplicity  of  soul  of  our  own  United  States. 


[  47  ] 


WEI\  Tf/6  TAINTE\ 
By  Emil  Car/sen 

JULIAN  Alden  Weir's  noble  simplicity,  generosity,  and 
lovable  personality  lives  in  his  every  picture.  As  the  man 
was,  so  are  his  works.  He  saw  beauty  and  truth  in  nature, 
and  with  his  fine  temperament  and  his  accumulated  sci- 
ence he  knew  how  to  translate  this  beauty  as  few  painters 
before  his  time.  His  art  stands  alone,  and  is  perfect  of  its  kind. 

To  paint  a  study  of  a  young  girl  with  a  book  or  a  fan, 
or  a  musical  instrument,  telling  no  story,  to  paint  a  simple 
landscape  of  a  few  trees  against  a  hillside,  and  to  make 
from  such  simple  motives  a  great  work  was  Weir's  mission 
in  modern  American  art. 

Weir  painted  portraits,  none  better  —  painted  with  a 
full  brush,  rich  and  mellow  in  tone,  with  fine  distinction. 
The  National  Academy  of  Design  owns  his  portrait  of  Al- 
bert Ryder,  a  splendid  canvas.  Not  only  is  it  an  excellent 
character  study  of  Weir's  friend,  sincere  and  living,  it  // 
Ryder,  the  dreamer,  the  poet,  the  artist.  Sound  in  tech- 
nique, powerful  in  quiet  color,  without  affectation,  without 
mannerism,  this  canvas  is  a  masterpiece. 

[  +9  ] 


JUL/A^  ALD8N  WEI^ 

To  explain  what  makes  this  work  so  great,  what  there 
is  in  Weir's  picture  that  holds  a  lover  of  fine  painting 
spellbound,  is  difficult.  To  analyze  a  picture  by  Vermeer, 
by  Metsu,  by  any  of  the  Dutch  wizards  of  painting,  is  an 
easier  task.  Those  masters'  workmanship  is  unassailable, 
perfect,  no  such  painting,  as  mere  painting,  has  since  been 
done.  Their  knowledge  covered  everything  that  could  be 
learned,  every  object,  in  or  out  of  doors,  was  enveloped 
in  its  atmosphere,  values  were  superbly  understood,  which 
means  that  the  local  color  contained  in  shadow  and  light  was 
justly  observed  and  rendered,  a  science  many  schools  have 
not  understood,  or  have  ignored,  their  painting  suffering 
for  this  omission.  Add  to  this  knowledge — the  A  B  C  of 
Dutch  painting — fine  color,  fine  expression  of  light,  chia- 
roscuro, tonal  beauty,  and  you  have  a  picture  of  quality. 

Weir's  painting  is  also  learned,  and  not  unlike  Dutch 
painting  in  its  fine  atmospheric  quality,  its  just  observation 
of  values,  its  exquisite  harmony.  He  is  an  excellent  draughts- 
man, spaces  well,  colors  well,  and  knows  better  than  any 
one  how  to  eliminate  all  superfluities  for  the  ultimate  en- 
semble. To  him  strong  contrast  is  not  needed  in  his  trans- 

[  50  ] 


AN  APP^ECIA  T/O^i 

lation,  so,  although  all  facts  are  based  on  nature,  painted 
out  of  doors  and  thoroughly  studied,  studied  with  the  keen- 
est of  observation,  those  facts  are  put  on  the  canvas  in  a 
gamut  according  to  the  will  of  the  painter.  Lights  are  sub- 
dued, shadows  kept  in  hand,  never  very  dark,  still  full  of 
local  color — the  picture  always  a  whole,  simple  impression. 

Don't  draw  too  much,  is  Weir's  motto;  don't  color  too 
much,  the  color  must  be  felt,  not  seen — so  the  drawing. 
A  Weir  landscape  or  figure  composition  is  simplicity  itself, 
but  painted  with  consummate  knowledge,  with  a  "fat," 
solid  technique,  power  and  delicacy  combined,  the  plainest 
of  method,  still  full  of  mystery  —  not  the  mystery  of  Ryder, 
nor  the  poetry,  maybe,  of  Twachtman,  but  of  a  mysterious 
quality  entirely  its  own,  a  subtle  individuality  of  an  exceed- 
ingly fine  temperament. 

This  Weir  quality  is  his  highest  achievement,  is  felt  in 
all  his  work,  in  portrait,  figure,  landscape,  or  still  life.  Who, 
in  American  art,  or  in  any  art,  has  painted  roses  like  Weir? 
The  first  painting  by  Weir  I  ever  saw  was  a  small  picture 
of  tea-roses,  a  few  inches  square,  quite  sketchy,  an  under- 
standing of  how  blossoms  should  be  painted,  a  revelation. 

[  5*  ] 


JULIAN^  ALDSN  WEIT^ 

Before  this  revelation  I,  as  a  student,  had  tried  to  under- 
stand the  mastery  of  Dutch  art,  also  of  Chardin's  art,— 
here  was  something  finer,  more  exquisite,  nature  seen 
through  a  nobler  temperament.  And  so  forever  since,  every 
new  picture  has  brought  a  new  delight. 

On  the  walls  of  exhibitions  a  picture  by  Weir  would 
dominate  by  its  choice  charm,  its  fine  impression,  would 
carry  across  the  gallery,  would  be  just  as  delightful  after 
intimate  study,  would  gain  on  acquaintance — to  the  stu- 
dent a  great  lesson,  to  the  lover  of  fine  painting  a  joy. 

The  list  of  Weir's  paintings,  drawings,  and  etchings  is 
a  long  one,  and  from  the  charming  little  head  of  a  French 
peasant  girl  until  his  last  landscape,  a  list  of  work  well 
seen  and  splendidly  rendered.  "  The  Hunter's  Moon,"  the 
two  "Nocturnes"  painted  from  his  Park  Avenue  studio, 
"Pan  and  the  Wolf,"  "The  Gentlewoman,"  "Little  Lizzie 
Lynch,"  "The  Fishing  Party,"  "The  Donkey  Ride,"  to 
name  a  few  of  his  great  pictures,  are  pictures  which,  once 
seen,  will  stay  forever  in  one's  mind,  pictures  to  live  with 
for  all  time,  when  so  many,  many  paintings  are  utterly 
forgotten. 

[   5*  ] 


wsn^ 

By  Royal  Cortissoz 

THE  important  thing  about  Weir  was  his  singular- 
ity, his  occupancy  of  a  place  apart.  For  years  it  has 
been  interesting  to  observe  the  manner  in  which  this  was 
recognized.  His  name  was  literally  one  to  conjure  with, 
and  it  figured,  therefore,  with  a  peculiar  salience  in  con- 
versation. In  exhibition  catalogues,  biographical  diction- 
aries, and  other  works  of  reference  he  was  recorded  as 
J.  Alden  Weir.  His  closest  intimates  called  him  Julian.  To 
frequenters  of  the  world  of  art  at  large,  and  amongst  his 
admiring  coevals  and  juniors,  he  was  known  simply  as 
Weir.  The  brevity  of  the  designation  implied  not  famil- 
iarity but  respect.  His  status  was  that  of  an  artist  who  by 
superior  gifts  is  naturally  detached  from  the  rank  and  file 
of  his  profession — the  status  of  a  La  Farge  or  a  Whistler, 
an  Inness  or  a  Sargent.  But  in  Weir's  case  the  significance 
of  the  tribute  paid  him  by  his  contemporaries  requires  a 
rather  special  interpretation.  That  fine  status  of  his,  fixed 
long  ago,  was  based  on  none  of  the  traits  which  ordinarily 
exalt  a  painter.  He  was  not  a  puissant  colorist  and  designer 

C  S3  ] 


JULIA ^  ALD8N  WEIT^ 

like  La  Farge.  His  originality  never  asserted  itself  as 
Whistler's  did.  Sargent's  self-confident  virtuosity  was  a 
thing  of  which  he  knew  nothing.  Weir  had  disciples,  but 
he  would  have  laughed  at  the  idea  of  posing  as  a  chef 
d9eco/e.  In  the  whole  range  of  his  work  —  and  he  was  a  pro- 
lific artist,  having  into  the  bargain  a  marked  versatility — 
it  is  doubtful  if  there  could  be  found  a  single  picture  of 
the  sort  that  is  commonly  called  "great."  On  the  other 
hand,  he  produced  many  pictures  that  were  purely  beau- 
tiful. It  was  through  them  that  he  won  his  high  repute, 
through  them  and  the  personality  behind  them. 

Where  he  was  concerned,  admiration  for  the  artist  was 
always  accompanied  by  affection  for  the  man.  It  is  incon- 
ceivable that  he  ever  could  have  had  any  enemies.  The 
jealousies  which  sometimes  follow  upon  such  success  as  his 
must  have  died  of  their  own  meanness  in  the  atmosphere 
of  his  presence.  He  was  generous  in  his  appreciation  of 
others,  helpful  to  the  younger  men  who  turned  to  him  for 
counsel,  and  a  staunch  friend.  He  had  an  endearing  laugh, 
the  kind  of  chuckle  that  belongs  only  to  a  sweet  nature. 
Perhaps,  too,  there  was  something  in  the  sheer  beauty  of 

[  5+  ] 


AN  APPT{ECIA  T/O^ 

his  physiognomy  which  helped  to  make  him  winning. 
The  phrase  is  rarely  applicable  to  a  man,  but  one  has  only 
to  look  at  the  bronze  bust  of  him  by  Olin  Warner  in  the 
Metropolitan  Museum  to  see  that  it  is  apposite.  In  his 
prime,  when  that  bust  was  modelled,  Weir  had  the  radiant 
aspect  which  legend  associates  with  the  young  Athenian 
athletes  of  antiquity.  His  profile  was  like  that  which  is 
sometimes  encountered  on  a  Greek  coin  —  only  there  was 
nothing  austere  about  it.  He  was  one  of  the  sunniest,  most 
human  of  creatures,  a  jolly  figure  in  the  old  days  of  the 
Tile  Club,  an  ardent  fisherman,  altogether  a  type  of  warm 
and  friendly  ways,  an  ingenuous  lover  of  nature  and  of 
his  fellow  men.  If  he  was  a  fastidious  chooser  of  comrades, 
it  was  also  characteristic  of  him  to  give  his  heart  with  both 
hands  when  he  gave  it  at  all. 

But  what  is  it  that  meant  such  a  loss  to  American  art 
when  he  died?  It  is  the  thing  that  so  early  in  his  career 
led  to  his  being  called  just  "Weir"  —  his  ardor  for  beauty, 
his  lofty  standard,  his  energy  in  the  quest  for  whatever 
was  fine  in  art,  and  the  impression  he  unconsciously  con- 
veyed that  this  quest  was  somehow,  with  him,  a  matter  of 

C  55  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEIT^ 

divine  election.  The  stamp  of  something  like  genius  was 
upon  him.  He  lived,  I  repeat,  in  a  place  apart,  his  proceed- 
ings seeming  always  to  have  a  certain  lofty  sanction.  He 
recognized  by  instinct  the  perfect  work  of  art.  There  are 
some  delightful  stories  of  his  European  experiences,  which 
were  those  of  a  modest  artist  placed  by  collectors  who  were 
his  friends  in  a  position  to  rub  Aladdin's  lamp  when  he 
peered  into  a  likely  corner.  He  it  was  who  bought  for  Erwin 
Davis  the  "  Jean  d'Arc,"  by  Bastien-Lepage,  which  Mr. 
Davis  gave  to  the  Metropolitan,  and,  if  I  am  not  mistaken, 
it  was  to  him  that  the  same  collector  was  indebted  for  one 
or  both  of  the  two  Manets  which  he  gave  to  the  Museum, 
the  "Boy  with  Sword"  and  the  "  Woman  with  Parrot." 
It  all  happened  thirty  years  ago  and  more — the  Davis  gifts 
were  made  in  1889  —  but  there  stays  in  the  mind  a  delec- 
table anecdote  of  Weir  suddenly  invading  Manet's  studio, 
of  his  pouncing  upon  the  pictures,  and  of  the  Frenchman's 
grateful  astonishment.  Possibly  it  is  apocryphal.  That  does 
not  matter.  The  tale  is  thoroughly  in  keeping  with  Weir's 
faculty  for  wise,  disinterested  transactions. 

There  is  another  story  of  his  buying  at  Agnew's  the 

[  56  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  TION^ 

magnificent  "  Portrait  of  a  Man,"  by  Rembrandt  (the  por- 
trait of  a  young  sitter,  in  high  hat  and  large  flat  collar), 
which  is  in  the  Marquand  collection  at  the  Metropolitan. 
Weir  was  going  abroad,  and,  so  the  story  runs,  Mr.  Mar- 
quand asked  him  to  keep  his  eyes  open  for  anything  that 
struck  him  as  superlatively  good.  He  saw  the  Rembrandt 
in  London  and,  though  it  cost  $25,000,  he  bought  it  on  the 
spot,  cabling  the  good  news  over.  While  he  was  waiting 
for  a  reply,  the  dealers  surprised  him  by  offering  to  buy 
the  picture  back  at  an  advance  of  $10,000.  Weir  smiled 
his  enchanting  smile  and  brought  the  Rembrandt  home. 
Doubtless  there  are  other  incidents  of  a  similar  nature  which 
might  be  chronicled.  There  must  have  been  numerous 
amateurs  who  were  only  too  glad  to  lean  upon  his  taste.  For 
his  taste  was  impeccable.  It  made  him  a  tower  of  strength 
for  his  fellow  craftsmen.  When  the  Society  of  American 
Artists  came  into  being,  in  the  late  7o's,  Weir  was  one  of 
the  founders  as  a  matter  of  course.  Equally  was  it  a  matter 
of  course  that  he  should  have  served  for  a  year  or  two,  not 
so  very  long  ago,  as  President  of  the  National  Academy 
of  Design;  that  he  should  have  been  a  member  of  the 

[  57  ] 


JULIAN^  ALDSN  WEFB^ 

Federal  Commission  of  Fine  Arts;  that,  in  a  word,  he 
should  always  have  played  his  part  in  matters  of  artistic 
organization.  Was  he  not  generous  as  well  as  wise,  an  artist 
who  labored  not  only  for  himself  but  for  the  good  of  his 
period  ?  His  liberality  of  feeling  extended,  too,  well  beyond 
the  boundaries  of  that  artistic  domain  in  which  he  was 
most  at  home.  He  contributed  to  the  celebrated  "  Armory 
Show,"  which  the  Association  of  American  Painters  and 
Sculptors  organized  in  19 13.  All  the  catalogues  of  the  ex- 
hibitions made  by  the  Society  of  Independent  Artists  are 
not  at  hand,  but  in  the  one  for  19 19,  at  all  events,  he  is 
recorded  as  a  member.  In  my  memories  of  the  last  twenty- 
five  or  thirty  years,  he  has  some  association  with  every 
progressive  episode  I  can  recall. 

Weir  labored  with  a  will  for  others.  The  labor  that  he 
did  for  himself  was,  in  a  sense,  the  hardest  of  all.  That  is 
to  say,  his  painting  was  not  by  any  means  the  fruit  of 
swift,  facile  craftsmanship,  and  to  reckon  him  amongst  the 
pampered  children  of  the  gods  would  be  to  miss  the  true 
secret  of  his  genius.  All  that  he  accomplished  was  the 
outcome  of  a  peculiarly  strenuous  devotion.  He  did  not 

[  58  ] 


AN  APP'RECIA  TION^ 

inherit  his  artistic  fortunes.  He  conquered  them.  An  old 
letter  to  me  contains  a  passage  eloquent  of  his  point  of  view. 
"  It  may  be  indiscreet,"  he  says,  "to  admit  that  I  have  never 
drawn  or  painted  a  canvas  but  that  it  has  fallen  discourag- 
ingly  short  of  what  I  tried  for."  There  is  nothing  indis- 
creet, and  I  have  no  compunction,  in  citing  so  noble  an 
admission.  It  points  to  the  very  heart  of  Weir's  character 
as  an  artist,  the  positively  sacred  zeal  with  which  he  sought 
after  perfection,  the  loftiness  and  inflexibility  of  his  stand- 
ard. It  is  odd  to  reflect  that  when  he  went  as  a  young  man 
to  Paris,  he  received  his  training  under  the  guidance  of 
Gerome.  But  he  foregathered  in  the  atelier  of  that  bleak 
disciplinarian  with  such  men  as  Bastien-Lepage,  Helleu, 
and  Dagnan-Bouveret.  Like  them  he  had  the  power  to  de- 
viate from  the  formulae  of  his  master.  He  did  so  at  the  time, 
but  not  so  far  as  to  make  himself  unacceptable  to  the  Salon. 
In  the  "Idle  Hours,"  which  was  presented  by  "several 
gentlemen"  to  the  Metropolitan  in  1888,  the  year  in  which 
it  was  painted,  we  perceive  clearly  enough  that  for  a  con- 
siderable period  after  his  return  from  Paris  Weir  was  still 
under  the  rather  repressive  influence  of  that  city's  modern 

C  59  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEIT^ 

tradition,  still  content  with  its  famous  gray  light.  Nor  is  it 
a  remarkable  picture.  But  it  is  a  good  one,  and  the  distinc- 
tion, as  I  have  already  noted,  is  always  cropping  out  in  the 
annals  of  Weir.  No  painter  perpetually  strikes  twelve.  Even 
the  greatest  masters  have  their  moments  which  are  less  feli- 
citous than  others.  Weir  was  not  always  on  the  heights. 
Wherever  he  was,  he  captured  that  elusive  element  which 
criticism  recognizes  as  "quality." 

Weir's  Parisian  habit,  in  which  "quality"  was  obscured 
beneath  the  mechanics  of  picture-making,  lasted  into  the 
9o's.  But  all  the  time  he  had  been  mulling  over  the  im- 
pressionistic hypothesis,  experimenting  with  problems  of 
light.  Then  he  took  the  plunge.  Instead  of  the  rich,  some- 
times ufat"  tone  which  had  distinguished  his  paintings, 
especially  his  lovely  pictures  of  flowers  and  still  life,  there 
appeared  in  his  landscapes  an  air  which  was  not  of  the 
studio,  but  which  seemed  to  blow  straight  from  out  of 
doors.  I  can  well  remember  his  excitement  over  the  change 
he  was  making.  It  was  as  though  he  had  come  into  pos- 
session of  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth.  I  can  remember 
also  that  his  touch  in  this  phase  at  first  lacked  certainty. 

[  60  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/OJ^ 

The  earliest  of  the  distinctly  impressionistic  landscapes  that 
he  showed  recur  to  me  as  forming  a  curiously  uneven  ex- 
hibition. They  had  vitality,  yet  they  did  not  quite  arrive. 
The  general  effect  was  a  little  thin.  Their  forms  were  not 
authoritatively  defined.  The  color  was  without  that  pre- 
cious quality  to  which  I  have  alluded.  Yet  quality  was  to 
prove  precisely  the  secret  of  his  ultimate  triumph. 

Would  that  triumph  have  come  sooner  if  he  had  more 
rigidly  narrowed  the  scope  of  his  endeavor,  making  land- 
scape his  sole  motive?  He  was  an  experimentalist  if  ever 
there  was  one,  and  the  remark  applies  to  the  matter  of  sub- 
ject as  well  as  to  that  of  method.  In  painting  the  figure  he 
moved  within  clearly  marked  limitations.  There  was  in  him 
no  inspiration  for  the  big,  dramatic  composition,  nor  had 
he  any  marked  predilection  for  the  purely  decorative  mo- 
tive. There  was  no  mistaking  his  relation  to  the  group  of 
artists  who  had  their  initiation  into  mural  painting  at 
Chicago,  at  the  time  of  the  World's  Fair  in  1892.  They 
were  all  afire  over  the  new  opportunity,  and  Weir  was  as 
eager  as  any  in  the  band.  Still  his  dome  was  not  one  of  the 
successes  amongst  the  porticoes  of  the  Liberal  Arts  Build- 

[  61  ] 


JULIA^ALDBN  WEIT^ 

ing.  It  was  plain  that  mural  painting  was  not  for  him.  But 
this  is  not  to  say  that  the  figure  was  outside  his  range. 
On  the  contrary,  when  he  accepted  his  natural  role,  he 
painted  the  figure  not  only  with  adequacy,  showing  that 
he  had  not  wasted  his  time  in  the  atelier  of  Gerome,  but 
with  a  personal  touch  positively  magical.  It  was  the  touch 
of  a  portrait  painter  doubled  with  the  poet.  Sometimes, 
as  in  "The  Pink  Bodice,"  he  seemed  to  be  echoing  an  early 
tradition,  as  though  half-forgotten  contacts  with  the  art 
of  Sir  Joshua  had  come  back  to  stir  his  emotions;  but  more 
often  he  would  be  the  unique  interpreter,  the  new  and 
original  artist  enveloping  a  type  of  feminine  grace  in  an 
air  that  was  all  his  own,  very  simple,  very  refined,  very 
beautiful.  He  had  stopped  "picture-making"  and  gone  on 
to  just  the  painting  of  impressions,  records  of  types  seen — 
and  enriched  by  imagination  and  taste. 

There  was  always  something  lyrical  about  Weir's  work 
at  its  best.  The  epical,  the  monumental,  was  not  in  his 
province.  Hence  his  only  momentary  absorption  in  mural 
decoration.  Hence  his  abstention,  after  a  few  ventures, 
from  the  beguilements  of  stained  glass.  With  still  life  he 

[  62  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  TfO^ 

was  as  much  at  home  as  with  the  figure  that  enmeshed 
him  in  no  great  problems  of  design,  and  with  flowers  he 
was  superb,  an  authentic  member  of  that  small  group 
which  embraces  Fantin-Latour  in  France,  Maria  Oakey 
Dewing  in  America,  and  only  a  few  others.  I  am  tempted 
here,  with  the  thought  of  Weir's  multifarious  excursions 
in  my  mind,  to  glance  briefly  at  his  prints.  One  of  them, 
the  "Arcturus,"  is  an  amazing  tour  de  force,  a  proof  that 
he  could  have  made  himself  a  masterly  Academician  if  he 
had  believed  it  worth  while.  But  though  this  and  several 
portraits  remind  us  that  he  could  draw  form  with  power, 
if  he  chose,  the  bulk  of  his  too  few  prints  belong  in  an- 
other world.  In  them  his  nervous,  skillful  line  is  put  at 
the  service  of  landscape,  and  there  it  takes  on  its  greatest 
effectiveness. 

When  Weir  turned  to  landscape,  he  added  to  the  ade- 
quacy, the  charm,  of  his  finest  figure  paintings  a  merit 
which  he  drew  in  part  from  his  subject.  It  is  obvious  in 
his  etchings  and  even  more  so  in  his  canvases.  Give  him 
a  straggling  stone  wall  or  rail  fence  enclosing  a  Connecti- 
cut pasture,  a  farmer  at  his  plow,  the  bridge  over  a  New 

[  63  ] 


JULIA^ALDSN  WEIT^ 

England  stream,  the  roofs  of  a  factory  town,  and,  above 
all,  trees,  plenty  of  racy  North  American  trees,  with  the 
very  spirit  of  our  country-side  in  their  sturdy  trunks  and 
shimmering  leafage,  and  he  could  translate  it  all  into  in- 
comparable beauty.  The  light  of  the  Impressionists  became 
the  light  of  Weir,  silvery  and  exquisite.  Earth  and  sky  took 
on  an  investiture  of  artistic  freshness  which  only  he  could 
give  them — and  moved  us  with  the  urgency  of  poignant 
truth.  When  he  painted  one  of  those  landscapes  of  his,  he 
gave  it  the  delicate  visionary  loveliness  of  a  dream,  yet  he 
left  the  picture  the  unmistakable  portrait  of  a  place.  He  was 
always  tackling  new  themes;  his  life,  as  has  been  indi- 
cated, was  one  long  endeavor,  but  in  the  landscape  paint- 
ings of  his  later  period  his  genius  seems  to  have  come  home, 
to  have  passed  with  a  kind  of  effortless  felicity  into  true 
artistic  form.  They  are  the  final  legacy  of  Weir,  rounding 
out,  bringing  to  a  climax,  all  the  characteristics  at  which 
I  have  glanced.  They  explain  why  he  never  lost  his  hold 
upon  the  imaginations  of  his  admirers.  Those  who  watched 
him  knew  from  the  beginning  that  he  was  in  pursuit  of 
a  glorious  ideal  and  they  saw  him  realize  it. 

[  64  ] 


AN  APP^ECIA  T/O^i 

Thinking  of  his  achievement,  and  of  his  influence,  the 
future  historian  of  American  art  will  linger  most,  I  believe, 
upon  an  essentially  spiritual  factor  in  him.  Weir  had  tech- 
nical ability.  He  had  a  style.  But  it  was  his  point  of  view 
that  won  the  day.  Long  ago  Walter  Pater  contended  that 
Platonism  was  not  a  system  of  philosophy  but  a  habit  of 
mind.  So  was  Weir's  passion  for  beauty.  He  did  not  bring 
it  within  the  confines  of  a  dogma  nor  put  it  into  words 
at  all,  but  simply  flung  the  fruits  of  it  upon  canvas.  He 
accustomed  us  not  to  a  certain  kind  of  picture,  measurable 
in  words,  but  to  a  habit  of  mind,  a  fine,  enkindling 
impulse. 


[  65  ] 


REMINISCENCES  OF  WEIT^ 
TSy  Childe  Hassam 

IF  artists  (broadly  speaking)  are  seers,  we  might,  as  a 
people,  pay  some  attention  to  the  remark  made  some 
years  ago  by  Rodin,  the  famous  French  sculptor.  "  There 
is,"  he  said,  "  a  renaissance  in  Art  now  going  on  in  Amer- 
ica, but  the  American  people  are  completely  unaware  of  it." 
If  this  is  so — and  some  very  astute  and  capable  men  believe 
that  it  is,  for  they  are  collecting  works  by  American  artists  — 
then  the  name  of  Julian  Alden  Weir  will  hold  a  high  place 
in  the  art  history  of  the  time. 

I  came  to  New  York  from  Paris  in  the  autumn  of  1889, 
but  it  was  1890  before  I  knew  anybody  in  the  town  very 
well.  I  was  from  Boston  and  just  too  young,  by  a  few  years, 
to  have  known  Weir  in  Paris.  I  even  missed  his  footprints 
there,  but  I  know  he  left  some.  However,  we  soon  became 
very  well  acquainted  in  the  New  York  of  the  90's. 

"The  Ten  American  Painters  "  was  started  during  the 
winter  of  1897-98. 1  proposed  the  idea  to  Weir  one  evening 
in  his  house  on  12th  Street.  I  remember  thinking  the  whole 
thing  over  on  my  walk  down  town  from  57th  Street,  where 

[  67  ] 


JULIAJ^ALDSN  WEIT^ 

I  had  my  apartment  and  studio  in  the  old  Rembrandt.  I  re- 
member that  I  walked  down  Seventh  Avenue  and  through 
Longacre  (now  Times)  Square,  then  down  Broadway.  At 
that  time  it  was  really  a  very  quiet  and  residential  walk. 
There  was  not  much  movement  on  the  streets  until  you 
came  to  42  d  Street.  It  might  have  been  called  quite  gay  as 
you  reached  23  d.  There  were  no  automobiles,  and  Times 
Square  looked  nothing  like  the  Midway  and  Machine  Shop 
it  now  resembles.  However,  enough  of  this  New  York  street 
scene  of  only  twenty  years  ago! 

"  The  Ten"  was  my  idea  entirely.  Weir  fell  for  it  like — 
well,  like  an  artist !  Twachtman  was  the  first  painter  to  whom 
we  talked.  Thayer  was  asked  and  the  three  Boston  men, 
Tarbell,  Benson,  and  De  Camp,  but  Thayer  did  not  come 
in.  Then  the  other  men,  Metcalfe,  Dewing,  Simmons, 
and  Reid,  whom  we  met  often  at  "The  Players'  Club," 
made  up  "The  Ten."  The  plan  was  to  have  an  Exhibition 
at  the  Durand-Ruel  Galleries,  then  at  36th  Street  and  Fifth 
Avenue.  It  was  one  of  the  large,  old  New  York  mansions 
with  a  gallery  that  had  a  top-light — a  real  picture  gallery 
of  moderate  size.  There  were  to  be  no  officers,  and  the  meet- 

[ 68  ] 


AN  APP^ECIA  T/O^ 

ings  to  arrange  for  the  Exhibitions  were  at  first  held  at  The 
Players'  Club.  Some  of  the  earliest  Exhibitions  —  two  or 
three,  if  not  more  —  were  hung  by  dividing  the  wall  space 
into  ten  centres,  one  wall  cut  by  a  door  not  being  so  good. 
Weir  was  always  enthusiastic  about  this  method  of  hang- 
ing. He  was  always  well  represented  in  every  Exhibition 
which  "The  Ten"  held,  and  never  missed  one — which 
was  a  much  better  record  than  some  of  us  made.  In  fact, 
Weir  and  Twachtman  maybe  said  to  have  contributed  most 
to  its  artistic  success.  At  least  I  thought  so  at  the  time,  and 
I  think  so  more  than  ever  now. 

I  saw  a  great  deal  of  Weir  in  town  and  country.  The 
first  dinner  I  went  to  in  a  New  York  painter's  home  was 
at  Weir's  charming  12th  Street  house  with  its  fine  old  furni- 
ture and  pewter.  His  old  pewter  was  a  note  in  his  dining- 
room.  I  remember  a  Thanksgiving  dinner  in  the  12  th  Street 
house,  with  Weir  and  a  turkey  at  one  end  of  the  old  oak 
table  (which  was  without  a  white  cloth,  most  unusual  this  in 
New  York  at  the  time),  and  then  there  was  Twachtman  and 
another  turkey  at  the  other  end.  And  there  was  old  pewter 
on  the  table.  It  is  handsome  anywhere — old  oak  and  pewter 

[  69  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEIT^ 

and  fine  blue  and  white  porcelain.  Few  were  on  to  it  then. 
Weir's  house  and  family  were  handsome  and  distinguished, 
and  he  himself  had  one  of  the  handsomest  heads  I  have  ever 
seen  anywhere  on  man  or  woman.  We  can  still  look  at  Olin 
Warner's  bust.  As  for  his  manner,  it  went  with  his  looks. 
He  was  a  rare  creation.  Never  shall  we  know  a  finer  one ! 

How  much  Weir  did  for  his  time  and  generation  in 
the  way  of  advice  about  buying  works  of  art  should  not 
be  forgotten.  I  was  on  the  point  of  writing  expert  advice, 
but  this  word  has  been  so  much  abused.  Anybody  is  an  ex- 
pert who  sells  or  writes  about  art,  or  even  auctions  it  off 
to  the  highest  bidder.  Of  course  some  of  these  are  experts 
as  to  the  current  value  of  the  works,  but  we  know  how 
such  values  change.  Weir  and  his  great  friend,  C.  E.  S. 
Wood,  told  me  that  Cottier  could  tell  a  work  of  art  a  mile 
away.  It  is  my  great  regret  that  I  was  not  to  meet  Cottier. 
He  went  off  the  stage  of  New  York  Art  as  I  came  on.  But 
I  can  most  sincerely  say  the  same  thing  of  Weir  and  Wood. 
For  these  two  men  liked  so  many  different  things  and  such 
divergent  ones — and  they  did  not  make  a  single  mistake 
(enough  time  has  gone  by  to  make  us  sure  of  this)  by  pick- 

[  70  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  TION^ 

ing  out  things  which  would  not  stand  the  test  of  time. 
Weir  bought  the  "Boy  with  Sword"  and  "Woman  with 
Parrot,"  by  Manet,  Bastien-Lepage's  "Jean  d'Arc,"  Rem- 
brandt's "Man  with  a  Black  Hat"  — all  now  at  the  Met- 
ropolitan Museum.  C.  E.  S.  Wood  bought  Albert  Ryder's 
masterpiece,  "Jonah  and  the  Whale,"  as  soon  as  it  was  fin- 
ished, and  it  was  a  pretty  delicate  operation  to  get  a  good 
grip  on  a  Ryder  when  it  was  finished  and  to  hold  on  to  it 
hard!  The  "Jonah"  is  a  wonderfully  beautiful  picture,  and 
is  now  in  the  collection  of  John  Gellatly  of  New  York.  It 
hung  for  years  in  Wood's  house  in  Portland,  Oregon,  and 
was  shown  in  the  Ryder  Memorial  Exhibition  at  the  Met- 
ropolitan Museum  a  year  or  two  ago.  Gellatly,  I  believe, 
has  been  quoted  as  saying,  "  I  wonder  how  the  Museum 
ever  allowed  me  to  get  hold  of  it." 

The  story  goes,  too,  about  Weir's  being  in  Durand- 
Ruel's  Paris  gallery  one  day  when  Stanford  White  came 
in.  "McKim 's  doing  a  Library  for  Boston  —  who 's  the  man 
to  make  a  big  mural  painting?  "  asked  White.  "  Why  Puvis, 
of  course  ! "  exclaimed  Weir.  They  went  from  there  to  the 
Place  Pigalle,  found  Puvis  de  Chavannes,  and  we  know  the 

[  71  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEIT^ 


rest.  He  painted  for  Boston  one  of  the  most  beautiful  mural 
decorations  in  the  world.  There  must  be  a  great  many  more 
things  like  this  we  owe  to  Weir. 

But  we  owe  most  to  him  for  giving  us  his  own  very 
beautiful  and  very  personal  works  in  painting  and  etching, 
made  throughout  a  life  devoted  to  his  art.  Whistler  de- 
clared that  he  knew  Weir  well  when  he  was  a  cadet  at 
West  Point  and  a  student  of  drawing  under  Weir's  father. 
"Don't  you  remember,  Weir — you  used  to  carry  notes  for 
me  to  the  Professor  of  Chemistry  ?  "  Silicon  was  not  a  gas, 
and  that  is  why  Whistler  went  out  of  West  Point  before 
Weir  could  possibly  have  been  old  enough  really  to  have 
known  him  there.  Again  a  matter  of  those  few  years / 
Whistler  liked  Weir,  and  of  course  swore  that  he  had  met 
him  at  West  Point.1 

1  They  met  as  artists  in  Paris,  in  a  room  of  the  Louvre,  where  Weir  was  making  a  copy. 
He  had  his  back  turned  to  the  passers-by,  but  became  conscious  of  one  man  walking  up 
and  down,  up  and  down  past  his  easel,  looking  at  his  work.  Finally  he  was  heard  to 
murmur,  "Not  bad — not  bad  at  all!"  With  his  delightful  smile  Weir  turned  and 
bowed  his  thanks.  The  man  said, "  I 'm  Whistler."  They  chatted  a  few  moments,  found 
much  to  talk  about,  and  arranged  to  dine  together.  Whistler  was  to  call  for  Weir  and 
take  him  somewhere  to  dinner.  He  was  late.  He  usually  was  late.  But  Jimmy  finally 
appeared,  and  urged  him  to  come  to  his  rooms  and  take  pot-luck.  Instead,  Weir  found 
a  most  Bohemian  dinner  party — but  the  guests  still  waiting  for  their  host,  who  had 
not  appeared.  It  was  a  sumptuous  feast  with  many  novel  features.  D.  P. 

[  72  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  TZOy^ 

From  West  Point  Weir  went  to  Paris,  where  he  did  not 
stay  too  long;  then  back  to  New  York,  where  he  produced 
the  works  known  to  all  art  lovers  for  their  rare  quality  of 
color,  whether  low  or,  as  later  in  life,  high  in  key  and 
always  personal  in  arrangement.  He  painted  Interiors  with 
figures,  many  portraits  of  his  family — still  life  —  land- 
scapes—  animals.  I  recall  two  exceptionally  fine  water 
colors,  dogs  by  the  fireside.  Weir  made  many  fine  water 
colors.  I  always  cite  Weir's  portrait  of  a  young  woman 
standing  by  a  mirror,  entitled  "The  Green  Bodice"  (at  the 
Metropolitan  Museum)  when  I  am  asked,  for  instance,  who 
has  painted  a  notable  portrait.  It  is  a  portrait  of  a  profes- 
sional model,  and  some  of  the  notable  portraits  of  the 
world  are  of  unknown  people  like  models. 

I  should  say  that  the  distinguished  aspects  of  all  these 
canvases  are,  a  certain  fine  quality  of  tone — an  almost 
unfailing  feeling  for  quality  of  paint,  and  a  very  delicate 
and  rare  quality  of  color  on  the  subtle  gray,  or  muted 
scale.  In  arrangements  Weir's  pictures  have  dignity  and  a 
naive  tendency  of  line.  They  are  the  work  of  a  very  sincere 
and  distinguished  artist. 

[  73  ] 


THE  TILS  CLUB 
By  J.  B.  Millet 

THE  Tile  Club  is  now  only  a  memory,  and  not  a 
familiar  one  for  the  present  generation  of  art  lovers, 
but  in  the  80 's  and  years  following  it  was  an  inspiration 
to  the  group  of  artists  whose  names  are  still  in  our  minds, 
and  whose  works  are  a  silent  appeal  to  our  best  thoughts. 
The  Tile  Club  seems  to  have  been  called  together  by  a  sort 
of  mental  telepathy,  as  if  each  member,  busy  in  his  own 
studio,  was  searching  unconsciously  for  that  sympathetic, 
appreciative  companionship  for  which  those  who  express 
themselves  in  the  language  of  art  feel  the  need.  At  first, 
when  the  club  meetings  were  mostly  conversational,  criti- 
cism of  one  another's  work,  and  more  or  less  of  the  world 
in  general,  was  the  chief  amusement.  One  night  a  mem- 
ber brought  in  some  undecorated,  unbaked  tiles  and  some 
specimens  of  finished  productions,  made  in  a  pottery  re- 
cently started  near  Boston.  Many  of  these  tiles  were  most 
excellent  in  color.  The  accidental  effects  due  to  the  flow 
of  glaze  in  baking  were  charming.  Here  was  a  new  me- 
dium of  expression.  Why  not  have  a  try  at  it?  Why  not 

C  75  ] 


JULIA^ALDSN  WE1\ 

paint  on  tiles,  and  see  how  they  came  out  in  the  baking  ? 
No  one  took  the  matter  seriously  at  first.  It  was  pure  fun. 
Some  of  the  results,  however,  suggested  serious  effort  to 
secure  the  like  effect  in  oils !  Fortunately,  portions  of  their 
conversation  were  recorded  later  by  two  keen  observers 
with  good  memories,  Earl  Shinn  and  F.  Hopkinson  Smith. 

"I  believe  I  am  getting  the  pearly  shadows  on  flesh 
to-day,  and  it  is  a  tile  that  is  teaching  me,"  said  the  figure 
artist.  "Those  difficult  gray  shadows  on  the  temples,  under 
a  girl's  hair.  Oil  painting  never  quite  resembles  flesh,  you 
know;  it  is  brutal  and  dirty  in  its  essence.  Water  color  is 
flimsy  at  the  best,  and  cannot  give  the  modelled  quality  of 
a  living  sitter.  Now  I  am  thinking  that  the  solution  lies  in 
faience  —  solidity  of  oil,  diaphanous  look  of  water  color; 
in  fact,  a  grand  union  of  all  those  qualities  of  ivory,  vel- 
vet, changeable  moth's  wing,  and  rose  petal  which  bother 
us  so  awfully  when  we  wrestle  with  a  girl's  mouth  in  flesh 
painting." 

When  congenial  souls  are  brought  together,  almost  any 
correlative  interest  will  hold  them  in  touch  while  com- 
panionship grows.  Tile  painting  served  in  this  case,  and 

[  76  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  TIO!N^ 

before  long  the  club  included  a  goodly  number  of  the  lead- 
ing artists  then  living  in  New  York.  Their  youthful  spirits, 
their  jovial  and  affectionate  fellowship,  is  made  clear  to  us 
now  by  the  names  they  gave  each  other,  understood  only 
by  themselves. 

At  first  the  membership  included  only  a  few  painters. 
Then  one  or  two  sculptors  were  added,  and  three  or  four 
musicians  were  invited.  It  would  be  impossible,  of  course, 
for  artists  of  such  prominence  to  meet  in  this  way  without 
creating  unusual  interest,  consequently  delicately  hinted  re- 
quests for  membership  were  frequent,  but  the  club  managed 
to  keep  its  number  down  and  to  confine  its  choice  to  kindred 
spirits  in  the  allied  professions  of  art,  architecture,  and  music. 

The  membership  was  limited  to  thirty-one.  Vacancies 
could  occur  only  from  deaths,  resignations,  or  residence 
abroad.  There  were  no  officers,  no  dues,  no  constitution, 
and  no  by-laws.  One  custom  was  rigidly  adhered  to — elec- 
tion of  members  by  unanimous  vote.  The  only  surviving 
members  of  this  remarkable  group  are  Dielman,  Maynard, 
Vedder,  and  Shugio.  A  complete  list  of  founders  and  mem- 
bers with  their  club  pseudonyms  follows: 

[  77  ] 


JULIA^ALDSN  WEIT^ 

Founders 

Walter  Paris 

The  Gaul 

Painter 

E.  Wimbridge 

The  Grasshopper 

Architect 

Winslow  Homer 

The  Obtuse  Bard 

Painter 

William  R.  O'Donovan 

I'he  Worm 

Sculptor 

Members 

Edwin  Abbey 

The  Chestnut 

Painter 

Charles  Stanley  Rhinehart 

Sinus 

Illustrator 

William  M.  Laffan 

Polyphemus 

Journalist 

R.  Swain  Gifford 

I'he  Griffin 

Painter 

F.  Hopkinson  Smith 

The  Owl 

Author,  Artist 

Frederick  Dielman 

Terrapin 

Painter 

Arthur  Quartley 

The  Marine 

Painter 

George  W.  Maynard 

Bird  o'  Freedom 

Painter 

Arthur  B.  Frost 

The  Icicle 

Illustrator 

Stanford  White 

The  Bearer  or  Builder 

Architect 

Alfred  Parsons 

The  Englishman 

Artist 

Napoleon  Sarony 

The  Hawk 

Artist 

J.  Alden  Weir 

Cadmium 

Painter 

George  H.  Boughton 

The  Puritan 

Painter 

Elihu  Vedder 

The  Pagan 

Painter 

Earl  Shinn 

The  Bone 

Literature  (nom  de plume 

Edward  Strahan) 

Augustus  Saint-Gaudens 

The  Saint 

Sculptor 

William  A.  Paton 

The  Haggis 

Author-Journalist 

Frank  D.  Millet 

The  Bulgar 

Painter 

William  M.  Chase 

Briareus 

Painter 

Charles  W.  Truslow 

The  Boarder 

Lawyer 

William  Gedney  Bunce 

The  Bishop 

Painter 

Heromichi  Shugio 

V arnish 

Art  Director 

[  78  ] 

AN  APP%ECIA  TIOO^ 
fionorary  Musical  Members 

William  C.  Baird  tfhe  Barytone 

Gustav  Kobbe  tfhe  Husk  Journalist 

Antonio  Knauth  'The  Horsehair  Music 

Dr.  Lewenburg  Catgut 

The  Tile  Club  abode  was  not  easy  to  find  without  in- 
structions. One  might  easily  pass  the  "main  entrance" 
even  in  a  slow  walk,  for  it  was  a  narrow,  sunken  doorway 
between  two  houses  on  West  ioth  Street.  It  opened  into 
a  narrow,  dark  tunnel,  which  ended  in  a  small  courtyard 
in  the  rear.  Here,  most  unexpectedly,  the  visitor  came  upon 
a  small  two-story  wooden  house,  which,  as  it  did  not  quite 
fill  the  yard,  had  for  an  approach  a  few  square  feet  of  gravel 
and  grass.  Like  many  of  the  houses  on  the  street,  this  one 
had  decorative  wrought-iron  railings  for  the  three  well- 
worn  board  steps  up  to  the  door.  The  latter  recalled  the 
doorways  in  Salem  or  Kennebunk.  A  narrow  entry  gave  the 
front  door  room  to  swing  open,  in  doing  which  it  partly 
obscured  the  entrance  to  the  living-room  on  the  right,  for 
the  club  occupied  the  whole  lower  floor  and  basement. 
The  upper  floor  was  a  studio.  The  club  room  was  low 
studded,  rather  square,  with  two  wide  windows  in  front, 

[  79  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEI\ 

a  large  fireplace,  and  a  long  table  in  the  middle  of  the  room 
around  which  all  present  gathered.  In  the  rear  were  the 
kitchen  and  pantry.  This  hidden  unique  courtyard  was  a 
feature  in  the  old  studio  quarter  of  the  town.  Church  spires 
and  a  clock  tower  were  so  close  as  almost  to  seem  to  be 
falling  upon  it. 

The  birth  of  the  club  came  at  the  time  when  decora- 
tive experimentation,  such  as  the  tying  of  bows  on  backs 
of  chairs,  painting  on  teacups,  making  monotypes  aided 
by  a  clothes-wringer  for  a  press,  was  the  chief  joy  and 
occupation  of  amateurs,  especially,  perhaps,  the  young 
ladies.  The  real  artist  never  despises  a  medium,  no  matter 
how  low  its  origin,  and  while  the  members  of  the  club 
assumed  in  the  presence  of  their  pupils  an  air  of  contempt 
for  tile  painting,  they  were  secretly  surprised  at  the  revela- 
tion of  beautiful  soft  tones  which  tiles  offered  for  apprecia- 
tion. 

There  was  no  professional  rivalry,  on  the  contrary  there 
was  a  frankness  in  discussing  one  another's  work.  Some- 
times there  was  what  seemed  to  be  a  determination  to  per- 
suade a  member  to  abandon  a  method  or  a  choice  of  sub- 

[  8°  J 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/O^ 

jects  for  which  every  one  except  himself  knew  he  was  not 
fitted.  Elihu  Vedder,  who  lived  in  Rome,  was  berated  by 
his  fellow  members  because  he  stayed  over  there  so  long 
instead  of  coming  to  New  York  and  getting  the  benefit 
of  criticism.  The  World's  Fair  at  Chicago  had  not  then 
given  interior  decoration  its  start.  Collectors  of  paintings 
were  few  and  prices  low,  so  that  to  many  artists  life  was 
a  real  struggle.  Book  and  magazine  illustration  were  sources 
of  income  to  be  well  looked  after.  It  was  at  this  time  that 
the  Ruhdiydt  of  Omar  Khayyam  illustrated  by  Vedder 
appeared.  It  was  a  magnificent  volume  and  instantly  pop- 
ularized the  poet.  E.  A.  Abbey's  double  full  pages  in  Har- 
per7  Weekly  and  his  illustrations  to  Shakespeare's  Come- 
dies were  then  waited  for  by  all  book- lovers.  The  publica- 
tions of  those  days  as  well  as  the  Christmas  cards  contained 
the  best  work  many  of  these  members  knew  how  to  do. 
Witness  also  the  etchings  of  the  period  and  the  lithographic 
calendars.  The  school  of  wood  engraving  which  the  Cen- 
tury Magazine  developed  was  just  at  its  highest  point,  and 
declined  rapidly  with  the  introduction  of  halftone  engrav- 
ing. The  club  had  its  summer  excursions  to  Montauk 

[  81  ] 


JULIA^ALDSN  WEI^ 

Point  or  Tom's  River,  where  members  spent  the  days  in 
sketching,  roughing  the  work  of  the  absent  ones,  and  lying 
in  the  sand  trying  to  forget  their  pupils ! 

They  were  equally  at  home  in  all  parts  of  the  world.  A 
listener  on  the  sands  at  Montauk  could  have  heard  refer- 
ences in  familiar  tones  to  Venice,  Vienna,  Paris,  Tokyo, 
Algiers,  Plevna,  or  Athens.  He  would  have  been  puzzled 
to  locate  the  real  homes  of  the  speakers,  so  completely  their 
reminiscences  blended.  Du  Maurier,  Burne-Jones,  Alma 
Tadema,  were  all  intimates,  and  through  Abbey,  Sargent, 
Boughton,  Parsons,  or  Millet,  who  lived  in  England,  were 
kept  in  touch  with  the  club's  life. 

Such  a  band  of  enthusiasts,  whose  serious  work  was  the 
better  and  more  enduring  because  of  their  joyous  tempera- 
ments, has  never  been  gathered  together  in  this  country 
since  that  day.  It  was  a  product  of  the  times,  when  diver- 
sions were  fewer,  when  there  was  more  time  to  think  and 
more  leisure  to  express. 

It  is  easy  to  imagine  what  one  of  these  evenings  would 
be  like.  The  tales  of  sketching  adventures  in  foreign  lands ; 
Millet's  stories  of  the  Russo-Turkish  war,  where  he  was 

[ 82  ] 


AN  APP^EC/AT/O^ 

correspondent  for  the  London  News  and  G raphic;  Abbey's 
account  of  London  society,  of  du  Maurier  longing  to  write 
books,  of  Alma  Tadema's  wonderful  house  in  St.  John's 
Wood  and  the  still  more  marvellous  price  paid  him  for  his 
painting,  "Reading  from  Homer."  Many  years  later,  one 
who  was  a  faithful  attendant  described  an  evening  somewhat 
as  follows: 

"'Cadmium'  [Weir],  in  evening  dress,  was  cooking  a 
large  steak  over  the  hot  coals  of  the  open  fireplace,  while 
Griffin  [R.  S.Gifford]  maintained  his  reputation  as  a  chef  by 
brewing  an  oyster  stew  and  making  a  welsh  rarebit  at  the 
same  time,  in  two  chafing  dishes.  Into  this  company,  stamp- 
ing off  the  snow  and  slapping  a  homespun  cap  against  his 
knees,  came  the <  Chestnut,'  E.  A.  Abbey,  just  from  England, 
still  feeling  the  roll  of  the  £  Servia,'  then  an  ocean  queen.  A 
joyous  shout  followed  by  a  hand  to  hand  dance  around  the 
table  greets  him,  and  then  silence  while  he  delivers  the  mes- 
sages from  Tadema,  Sargent,  Parsons,  and  Rhinehart." 

To  Abbey  we  owe  the  origin  of  the  word  "Chestnut," 
given  by  the  club  to  one  of  his  interminable  stories,  and 
afterwards  accepted  by  the  outside  world  as  a  name  for 

[  83  ] 


JULIA  3^  ALD8N  WEI\ 

an  old  story.  The  records  of  the  Tile  Club  describe  it  as 
follows  : 

"Now  the  Chestnut  story  is  one  of  those  interminable 
pointless  humbug  narrations  which  the  French  call  a  <  scie.' 
Eternally  getting  to  the  point,  and  never  arriving  there; 
exciting  vast  interest  and  calculation  in  regard  to  the  chest- 
nuts on  a  certain  tree;  promising  a  rich  and  racy  solution 
in  the  very  next  sentence;  straying  off  into  episodes  that 
baffled  the  ear  and  disappointed  the  hope.  This  tale  could 
be  prolonged  by  him,  when  he  was  at  his  best,  for  a  good 
part  of  an  hour,  without  ever  releasing  the  attention  or  sat- 
isfying expectation.  As  time  wore  on,  the  more  solemn  and 
practical  of  the  guests  would  look  at  each  other  gravely; 
the  more  astute  sons  of  Belial,  perceiving  the  joke,  would 
steal  out  and  fulminate  and  explode  in  corridors.  At  a  given 
moment  the  tableful  would  perceive  the  crux,  and  burst 
into  horse-laughs,  with  the  acknowledgment  that  they  had 
been  vended  at  an  inconsiderable  price;  and  there  would 
be  one  delicious,  venerable  Englishman,  who,  when  all  were 
roaring,  would  confess  that  he  was  always  slow  at  catching 
the  point  of  American  humor,  and  would  ask  his  neighbor 

[  8+  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/O^ 

to  oblige  him  by  telling  what  it  was  all  about.  This  repre- 
hensible hoax,  let  off  as  a  test  upon  successive  parties  of 
those  whom  Britain  numbered  among  her  brightest,  was 
by  little  and  little  quoted  in  social  circles  as  a  symbol. 
English  literary  men,  who  had  heard  it  and  been  taken  in 
by  it,  began  to  use  the  title  in  their  writings  as  a  type  of 
an  endless  or  unsatisfactory  yarn.  And  the  word,  'Chest- 
nut,' crossing  the  sea,  returned  again  to  the  land  of  its  birth, 
and  became  the  accepted  definition  of  what  is  tedious,  old, 
and  interminable." 

Incidents  told  at  each  other's  expense  were  a  stimulation 
to  invention  or  at  least  to  exaggeration  of  personal  char- 
acteristics. The  morning  after  a  late  session,  Vedder  wrote 
Millet  as  follows: 

"Dear  Frank,  I  return  the  five  dollars  I  borrowed  of 
you  last  night  just  to  show  you  that  I  was  not  quite  so 
much  'how  came  you  so'  as  you  thought  I  was.  V." 

To  which  Millet  replied:  "I  return  the  five  dollars  which 
you  did  not  borrow  of  me  just  to  show  you  that  you  were 
just  about  what  I  thought  you  were.  F.  D.  M." 

[  85  ] 


J 


JULIA^  ALDSN  WEI^ 

Vedder  and  Saint-Gaudens  were  in  Yamanaka's  Japanese 
store  admiring  and  examining  various  bronzes  and  porce- 
lains. Picking  an  unusually  beautiful  piece,  Vedder  called 
to  Saint-Gaudens,  saying,  "Just  look  at  that!  And  we  send 
missionaries  out  there." 

Among  the  oft  repeated  stories  in  the  club  was  one  which 
described  an  old  colored  woman  standing  in  the  kitchen 
door,  calling  to  her  daughter  out-doors —  "  You  May- Jane, 
come  in  offen  de  wet  grass,"  which  in  time  became  a  sort 
of  password.  Hopkinson  Smith,  on  returning  from  one  of 
his  trips  to  Holland  the  year  before  he  wrote  Well-  Worn 
Roads  in  Holland,  Spain,  and  Italy,  told  the  club,  "Yes, 
I  saw  Chase.  It  was  in  Antwerp.  I  was  wandering  around 
trying  to  find  a  good  thing  to  sketch.  I  came  to  a  narrow 
sort  of  lane  which  led  up  to  a  courtyard  near  a  house  that 
looked  as  if  Rubens  might  have  lived  in  it.  There  in  the 
full  sunlight,  back  to  me,  with  a  cap  on  his  head,  a  five- 
foot  canvas  in  front  of  him,  stood  Chase  laying  in  his  back- 
ground with  mighty  sweeps  of  his  brush.  I  called  out,  "You 
May-Jane,"  and  Chase,  without  losing  a  sweep  or  turning 

[  86  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/OJAC 

his  head,  and  with  an  extra  brush  in  his  mouth,  shouted 
back,  "Come  in  offen  de  wet  grass!"  So  I  knew  he  was 
all  right  and  I  left  him  with  no  more  words.  Haven't  seen 
or  heard  of  him  since." 

Into  this  group  came  a  young  enthusiast,  fresh  from  the 
ateliers  of  Paris,  a  painter  for  whom  all  the  others  pre- 
dicted a  glorious  future,  one  whose  remarkable  personal 
beauty  was  the  envy  of  all — J.  Alden  Weir.  Every  one's 
affection  seemed  to  go  out  to  him.  All  his  life  he  was  a 
most  lovable,  sincere,  and  sympathetic  companion ;  and  in 
those  early  days  these  qualities  were  like  an  aura  of  which 
he  was  not  in  the  least  conscious.  An  evening  at  the  Tile 
Club  did  not  start  right  until  Weir  appeared,  and  on  more 
than  one  occasion  it  ended  something  like  this:  "Finally 
the  Bird  o'  Freedom  [Maynard]  says  —  'Twelve  o'clock, 
Tilers,  I  have  a  model  coming  at  nine.' 

"<By  Jove,  so  have  I,'  nervously  exclaimed  Cadmium 
[Weir],  consulting  his  watch,  'and  she  won't  wait  a 
minute.'" 


[  87  ] 


1 


WEH^  THE  FISHERMAN 
By  U.  de  Raarfoff 

WEIR  loved  the  "out  of  doors,"  his  artistic  tem- 
perament as  well  as  his  virile  love  of  sport  made 
him  seek  the  "open,"  where  he  found  opportunities  for  his 
skill  with  the  brush  and  the  rod.  In  his  later  years  fishing, 
next  to  painting,  gave  him  the  greatest  pleasure,  and  what- 
ever incense  could  be  spared  from  the  altar  of  the  goddess 
of  Art  was  burned  at  the  altar  of  the  goddess  of  Sport. 

I  remember  so  well  the  first  time  I  met  him,  at  a  dinner 
given  by  E.  R.  Hewitt  to  the  members  of  a  newly  founded 
fishing  club,  the  old  Woodbury  Club.  Weir  sat  at  the  right 
hand  of  the  host,  and  I  have  never  forgotten  how  he  looked, 
and  how  he  talked,  and  how  he  laughed,  always  ready  to 
cap  a  story.  Many  were  the  places  he  had  wetted  his  line, 
and  various  were  the  fish  that  had  fallen  to  his  skill.  He 
knew  the  English  streams  almost  as  well  as  those  of  his 
native  land,  and  his  narratives  were  interesting  because 
through  all  his  stories  ran  that  wonderful  thread  of  artistic 
understanding  which  lifted  his  descriptions  to  a  plane  we 
philistines  could  not  reach. 

[  89  ] 


JULIA^  ALD8N  WEI\ 

The  acquaintance  of  that  night  was  destined  to  grow 
into  a  very  warm  and  intimate  friendship,  and  as  his  fishing 
partner  for  years  I  tasted  to  the  full  the  charm  of  his  strong 
personality. 

Our  first  joint  fishing  was  done  from  his  place  at  Branch- 
ville,  Connecticut.  In  the  morning,  as  soon  as  breakfast  was 
over  and  the  "hamper"  packed,  we  would  get  into  the 
buggy,  Weir  of  course  driving 

The  country  around  Branchville  is  very  "paintable," 
and  on  the  way  to  the  fishing  place  Weir  was  all  "artist," 
pointing  out  to  me  the  manifold  beauties  of  the  landscape. 
When  I  called  his  attention  to  some  stately  trees,  he  said 
with  that  smile  of  his,  "Those  are  my  trees.  I  bought  them 
because  the  farmers  do  not,  as  a  rule,  appreciate  such 
trees  and  are  quite  liable  to  sell  them  for  lumber." 

The  old  gray  horse,  used  to  these  expeditions,  took  its 
own  and  far  from  "hectic"  gait,  and  in  this  easy  way 
would  we  amble  along  until  I  would  have  to  call  Weir's 
attention  to  the  fact  that  the  luncheon  hour  was  approach- 
ing and  that  we  were  yet  far  from  our  ground ;  whereupon 
he  would  come  down  from  the  clouds  and  lustily  thwack 

[  90  ] 


AN  APP^ECIA  T/O^ 

the  aged  quadruped,  which  would  jerk  its  tail  into  the  air 
in  sign  of  deep  disapproval  and  break  into  some  fancy 
steps  remotely  resembling  a  trot,  only  to  lapse  into  its 
former  gait.  Weir  would  also  resume  his  interrupted  dis- 
course, and  I  —  realizing  that  after  all  this  was  quite  as 
good  as  fishing — was  well  content  to  jog  along  with  my 
friend.  How  often  have  I  recalled  the  charm  of  those  in- 
timate drives. 

Unlike  a  good  many  fishermen,  he  never  growled  at  the 
weather  and  never  grouched  at  his  luck,  so  that  I  ended  by 
calling  him  "  Sunny  Jim,"  which  always  amused  him.  Given 
such  a  combination  added  to  a  singularly  attractive  person- 
ality, and  a  more  delightful  companion  would  be  hard  to 
find.  I  know  what  a  pleasure  it  always  was  when  I  came  to 
the  part  of  the  stream  he  was  fishing  to  hear  his  cheery  voice, 
"I've  finished  this  pool,  come  and  have  a  smoke;"  and 
then  would  follow  a  delightful  little  chat,  and  many  were 
the  beauties  he  pointed  out  to  me. 

The  preparations  for  the  coming  season  were  always 
a  matter  of  keen  pleasure  and  importance  to  him.  For 
years,  on  the  first  Sunday  after  the  ist  of  January,  he  would 

[  91  ] 


1 


JUL/A^ALDSN  WEI\ 

call  me  up  soon  after  breakfast — we  lived  in  the  same 
house  on  Park  Avenue — and  the  first  pipe  of  the  season 
would  be  smoked  with  due  solemnity,  and  the  first  over- 
hauling of  the  fly-book  begun. 

These  same  flies,  his  flies,  were  the  source  of  much  fun 
for  both  of  us,  for  he  neither  could  nor  would  keep  them 
in  anything  resembling  a  fisherman's  idea  of  order,  and 
to  my  methodical  soul  this  was  an  aggravation.  After  long 
and  amusing  squabbles  I  would  finally  prevail  upon  him 
to  let  me  put  the  flies  into  proper  order,  and  once  done 
he  would  admit  that  my  arrangement  was  the  best!  But 
there  was  always  a  subtle  shading  in  his  voice  and  a  stray 
gleam  in  his  eye,  which  caused  a  vague  doubt  in  me  as  to 
the  absolute  sincerity  of  his  assertion.  Sure  enough,  the 
next  time  I  took  up  his  fly-book,  I  was  greeted  by  the 
same  riot  of  color,  the  same  artistic  arrangement,  but  alas ! 
the  same  chaos,  while  Weir,  with  a  smile  of  utter  and 
complete  guilelessness,  wholly  disarming,  would  admit 
that  somehow  he  liked  the  color  scheme  and  somehow  he 
couldn't  keep  the  flies  in  the  beautiful  order  I  had  put 
them  in! 

[  92  ] 


AN  APP^ECIA  T/O^ 

Weir  was  always  ready  to  fish,  as  long  as  it  did  not  in- 
terfere with  his  painting.  From  April  ist,  when  we  would 
go  to  Connecticut  and  all  but  fish  through  the  ice  —  we 
certainly  fished  through  more  than  one  snowstorm— his 
sport  shaded  from  trout  to  bass,  and  in  the  fall  from  bass 
to  sea-fishing. 

We  belonged  to  a  club  in  the  Pocono  Mountains,  Penn- 
sylvania. The  opening  day  was  on  the  15th  of  April,  where- 
fore the  14th  witnessed  a  joyous  exodus  from  New  York, 
and  no  one  was  more  enthusiastic  and  delighted  than  Weir. 
The  next  morning  he  was  the  first  to  get  up  and  the  first 
one  ready  to  take  the  field.  How  many  mornings  when  I 
thought  I  was  getting  up  "real  early"  have  I  seen  Weir — 
his  room  was  in  an  "ell"  just  across  from  mine — deeply 
immersed  in  the  intricacies  of  his  blessed  fly-book,  and 
looking  decidedly  guilty  when  I  called  "Good  morning." 
But  despite  the  seeming  chaos  in  the  arrangement  of  his 
flies,  he  had  a  knack  of  picking  some  which  would  serve  his 
purpose  and  often  he  "  wiped  my  eye,"  much  to  his  delight. 
For  Weir  was  a  good  fisherman,  and  like  a  celebrated,  pisca- 
torially  inclined  divine,  always  brought  back  trout;  occa- 

[  93  ] 


JULIA^ALDSN  WE1\ 

sionally  he  would  be  rewarded  by  a  full  creel.  I  never  could 
quite  keep  up  with  him. 

As  I  have  said  above,  in  the  fall  Weir's  fancy  lightly 
turned  to  thoughts  of  sea-fishing.  We  went  several  times 
to  Stamford  and  South  Norwalk — half-way  meeting-places 
when  he  was  in  Branchville — and  chartering  a  small  boat, 
we  would  put  out  after  snappers,  etc. 

I  remember  once  at  Stamford  we  had  taken  a  boat,  too 
small  really  for  three  heavy  men — so  small,  in  fact,  that  we 
had  to  sit  on  a  plank  laid  athwartship  in  the  stern,  so  that 
we  really  sat  on  the  gunwale,  a  decidedly  risky  position. 
We  had  trolled  for  some  time,  but  no  bass,  when  suddenly 
I  had  a  violent  and  heavy  strike.  Just  what  it  was  that  had 
run  foul  of  my  bait  we  could  n't  tell,  for  I  had  a  long  line 
out ;  but  when  I  had  taken  in  enough  line  to  distinguish 
the  triangular  fin  of  a  good  sized  "dog-fish,"  we  realized 
we  were  in  somewhat  the  same  predicament  as  the  man 
who  had  a  bear  by  the  tail,  and  did  n't  know  whether  to 
hang  on  or  let  go.  Weir  took  immediate  charge  and  told 
me  I  was  to  "hang  on"  and  get  him  near  enough  so  he 
could  "net  him"!  However,  the  fish  decided  matters  for 

[  94  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/O^ 

himself,  and  tore  loose  before  I  could  carry  out  Weir's  in- 
structions and  disappeared,  Weir  shaking  the  net  after  him 
in  a  vindictive  manner.  All  of  which  was  very  amusing. 

His  sunny  temper  soon  reasserted  itself,  and  at  his  sug- 
gestion we  moved  to  another  place  which  he  and  the  boat- 
man thought  looked  "likely."  We  anchored  and  got  our 
lines  out,  but  no  strike.  Finally  Weir  began  hauling  in  his 
line  very  carefully,  and  sure  enough  there  was  "some- 
thing" on!  After  judicious  testing  he  decided  it  must  be 
a  crab,  and  having  hauled  his  line  in  as  far  as  he  dared, 
brought  up  whatever  it  was  with  a  rush — and  landed  — 
an  oyster! — a  great  big  one.  For  a  moment  he  was  non- 
plussed, but  only  for  a  moment.  With  his  heavy  knife  he 
pried  the  shells  apart,  and  with  a  courtly  bow  to  me — swal- 
lowed the  oyster !  The  whole  thing  was  done  with  such 
perfect  sang-froid  and  finish  that  for  a  moment  I  could  find 
no  words  to  express  my  outraged  feelings,  and  then  the 
humor  of  the  whole  thing  struck  us  both,  and  we  had  our 
second  good  laugh  that  day. 

I  once  heard  of  a  place,  not  too  far  from  New  York, 
where  my  informant  assured  me  there  was  good  fishing. 

[  95  ] 


JUL/A^ALDSN  WEI%^ 

Weir  and  I  talked  it  over,  and  decided  to  give  it  a  trial. 
After  more  or  less  successful  endeavors,  we  came  in  the 
afternoon  to  a  wondrous  pool.  As  I  was  the  one  who  had 
suggested  the  expedition  to  Weir,  I  insisted  he  take  the 
pool,  and  he  proceeded  at  once  to  go  into  action.  His  cast- 
ing was  flawless,  and  I  was  wondering  whether  his  skill 
would  be  wasted  when  he  had  a  corking  strike.  Hardly 
had  I  grasped  the  fact  when  I  saw  he  had  another  fish,  and 
a  good  one,  on  his  second  fly  (we  fished  "wet"  with  two 
flies  in  those  days).  And  now  began  a  fierce  battle.  Weir 
had  a  light  rod  and  light  tackle  as  befits  a  real  fisherman, 
who  is  willing  to  give  the  fish  every  chance,  and  he  fought 
the  fish  in  a  masterly  manner.  Back  and  forth  they  drove, 
but  finally  they  were  brought  to  net,  and  then  came  our 
bitterest  disappointment — the  trout  were  chubs!  whaling 
big  fellows,  to  be  sure,  but  chubs,  nevertheless.  Now  a  man 
is  justified  in  feeling  annoyed  when  he  finds  he  has  wasted 
his  time  and  skill  on  such  a  worthless  thing  as  a  chub,  he 
may  even  use  moderate  language,  but  the  limit  is  off  when 
he  catches  two  chubs  at  once.  But  Weir  availed  himself 
not  of  any  right  he  may  have  felt  he  had,  and  while  regret- 

[  96  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/Oy^ 

ting  that  it  was  only  chub  he  had  caught,  said,  "I  was 
fooled  as  much  as  you.  I  thought  they  were  two  trout, 
really,  and  played  them  for  trout,  so  what's  the  odds, 
and  the  pool  certainly  is  lovely;  let 's  sit  down  and  take  a 
good  look  at  it."  On  the  way  home  he  was  as  chipper  as 
could  be. 

Such  was  Weir  the  fisherman,  such  was  my  partner. 
When  I  revisit  the  old  places — scenes  of  so  much  pleasure 
and  good  fellowship — I  cannot  realize  that  he  is  n't  there, 
and  I  am  always  looking  to  find  him  at  the  next  pool. 

Hunter,  New  York. 


[  97  ] 


A  LETTER 

From  Augustus  Vincent  Tack 

A VIRTUE  not  only  most  highly  esteemed,  but  assid- 
uously  cultivated  by  the  ancients,  was  "  Magnan- 
imity." "Great  mindedness  "  does  not  fully  express  all  they 
intended  in  their  meaning.  It  was  a  quality  high  above 
what  is  mean  or  ungenerous  —  a  true  loftiness  of  spirit, 
courage,  and  nobility  of  soul.  It  seems  to  me  Alden  Weir 
had  this  virtue  in  the  Greek  sense,  and  he  was  all  that 
Horace  expresses  in  the  line  Integer  vitae  scelerisque  purus. 

I  well  remember  my  first  impression  of  Weir.  It  was 
the  custom  of  the  Art  School,  in  which  I  was  a  very  young 
student  indeed,  to  hold  each  month  a  concours  in  which 
the  drawings  were  marked  in  order  of  their  merit.  The 
drawings  were  called  "academies"  or  life  drawings.  Weir 
was  instructor  in  painting  of  the  portrait  class  at  the  time 
to  which  I  refer.  He  came  into  the  life  class  one  day  to 
see  the  drawings,  which  had  just  been  marked.  His  gen- 
erous praise  of  the  qualities  he  found  in  the  student  work 
was  both  inspiring  and  striking,  but  more  so  to  me  was 
his  indignation  at  the  unnecessary  realism  of  some  of  the 

[  99  ] 


JULIA^ALDSN  WEIT^ 

work.  There  was  a  starkness  in  some  of  the  drawings  that 
was  abhorrent  to  him,  and  to  me,  a  young  student,  it  was 
my  first  realization  of  the  great  gulf  between  the  nude 
and  the  naked.  It  was  an  impression  I  have  never  forgotten, 
and  I  always  associate  with  Weir  the  distinction  to  which 
I  refer.  The  great  refinement  of  his  feeling ;  his  reverence 
for  feminine  loveliness;  his  sense  of  chivalry;  his  choice 
of  subject  and  his  approach  to  it  are  all  evidence  of  this 
quality  of  spirit.  There  was  a  something  of  Sir  Galahad 
in  him. 

In  late  life  his  quick  sympathy,  his  understanding  and 
interest,  were  always  an  inspiration.  To  have  known  him 
was  to  have  known  high  mindedness — great  mindedness  — 
pure  mindedness,  and  one  of  the  most  lovable  gentlemen 
of  our  time. 

Deerfield,  Mass. 


[  100  ] 


*A  LETTER 
From  C.  E.  S.  Wood 

A  FTER  much  wandering  seeking  seclusion  in  which 
±  to  recover  from  "Flu"  and  write,  I  located  at  this 
fishing  village — without  railroad,  trolley  line,  telegraph, 
and  telephone,  and  here  your  letter  of  February  25  has 
just  found  me.  What  adventures  it  has  had,  I  do  not  know. 
I  fear  it  lay  in  Portland  a  long  time,  as  my  Secretary  there 
has  been  greatly  interested  in  offering  her  services  for  the 
defence  at  the  trial  of  the  I.  W.  W.'s  at  Montesano.  Other 
reporters  —  at  least  local — with  that  emotional  failure  to 
distinguish  between  fair  play  and  judicial  lynching  which 
has  made  this  country  a  mad-house  for  the  last  three  years, 
refused  to  act.  However,  whatever  be  the  cause,  your  letter 
of  a  month  ago  has  just  reached  me,  and  as  you  ask  an 
immediate  answer  I  write  at  once,  but  you  understand 
no  one  can  on  the  instant  bring  to  mind  the  incidents  of 
a  lifetime — those  easiest  forgotten  as  seeming  trivial  being 
often  the  most  colorful. 

I  first  knew  Weir  at  West  Point,  where  I  was  a  cadet 
of  between  18  and  19  — in  1870-71.  Julian,  as  he  was 

[  101  ] 


JULIA^ALDSN  WEI<\ 

always  called  by  the  family,  was  a  very  handsome  boy  of 
about  the  same  age  (he  was  six  months  younger  than 
myself).  At  that  time  he  was  a  pupil  to  his  father,  who  was 
head  of  the  Department  of  Drawing  of  the  Academy,  and 
I  was  too  new  at  West  Point  and  he  left  for  Paris  too  soon 
for  us  to  become  intimate — though  I  was  a  visitor  at  the 
house  for  four  years,  or  until  I  graduated. 

In  later  years  he  recalled  to  my  mind  a  scrape  he  got 
into  at  that  time  with  his  father.  Julian  at  the  time  of  our 
conversation  was  fussing  among  his  brushes  for  a  particular 
brush,  wasting  considerable  time  and  muttering.  He  looked 
up  with  a  merry  twinkle  in  his  eye  and  said,  "I  used  to 
think  one  brush  was  the  same  as  another — so  one  time, 
being  in  a  hurry,  instead  of  washing  father's  bunch  of 
brushes  as  it  was  my  duty  to  do,  I  stuck  them  in  the  fire, 
thinking  he  would  never  miss  them  from  the  great  sheaf 
he  had.  But  my !  my !  Was  n't  there  a  war,  and  did  n't  I 
catch  it  when  I  finally  had  to  'fess  up!" 

With  Weir  studying  abroad  and  I  on  the  Pacific  Coast 
after  graduation  (1874),  we  did  not  see  each  other  till  I 
began  studying  law  in  New  York — at  the  Law  School  of 

[  102  ] 


AN  APPT^ECIA  r/OJAC 

Columbia  College,  then  in  Great  Jones  Street,  not  far  from 
Washington  Square,  where  Weir  had  a  studio  in  the  Bene- 
dict Building,  which  was  inhabited  by  a  group  such  as 
Bunce,  Eaton,  Low,  Saint-Gaudens,  and  Warner.  This  was 
about  1882.  As  Weir  and  I  have  looked  around  the  bare 
studios  of  his  later  years  —  warm  gray  walls,  a  chair  for 
the  model  on  the  movable  platform,  one  easel,  a  perfectly 
plain  folding  screen,  and  nothing  else,  we  have  laughed 
at  the  luxurious  studio  of  the  young  man  just  back  from 
Paris,  fitted  up  by  Cottier — velvets,  tapestries,  brocades, 
Gothic  cabinet,  Louis  guatorze  chairs,  a  couch,  rugs,  armor, 
a  full  length  copy  of  a  Velasquez  by  Weir  himself  over 
the  mantel,  and  a  great  yellow  Venetian  glass  bowl  filled 
with  goldfish  and  hung  by  brass  chains  from  a  rough  ceil- 
ing of  darkest  blue  studded  with  stars  of  varying  magni- 
tudes and  one  impossible  comet,  all  exceedingly  decora- 
tive. 

Weir  had  colored  his  windows  to  imitate  stained  glass, 
and  altogether  it  was  a  studio  out  of  a  French  novel,  but  I 
need  not  say  that,  though  elegant,  luxurious,  even  sensuous, 
it  was  in  perfect  taste.  Weir  was  at  that  time  enthusiastic 

[  io3  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEI\ 

in  the  rebellion  against  the  Academy  and  the  "Hudson 
River"  School.  He  was  enthusiastic  in  whatever  he  did, 
fishing,  painting,  rebelling,  or  doing  good. 

"Pinky"  Ryder  was  then  living,  as  usual,  in  a  den,  I 
think  over  on  West  nth  Street,  and  when  their  friendship 
began,  I  cannot  say.  Whether  or  not  Weir  brought  the 
gentle  hermit  Ryder  into  the  rebellion  of  the  "  Society  of 
American  Artists,"  I  don't  know,  but  Weir  was  at  this  time 
both  reverencing  and  championing  Ryder  as  a  great  origi- 
nal genius  —  a  poet  in  the  painter's  art  —  and  from  that 
time  on,  according  to  Ryder's  needs,  Weir  brothered  him, 
fathered  him,  and  lovingly  cared  for  him.  (Ryder  did  ex- 
hibit with  the  Society  of  American  Artists.)  Weir  did  once 
(just  once,  I  believe)  drag  the  mollusc  from  its  shell  below 
low  tide  in  the  dark  rock  cavern  and  got  "Pinky"  up  to 
his  farm  at  Branchville,  where  he  had  prepared  a  special 
room  for  him,  and  feeling  Ryder's  morbid,  almost  insane 
shyness,  as  only  a  tender  poet  soul  such  as  Weir's  own  could 
feel,  had  had  a  door  specially  cut  from  Ryder's  room  direct 
into  the  open  so  he  could  come  and  go  without  facing  the 
family.  But  even  with  everybody's  thoughtfulness  walling 

[  io4  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/O^C 

him  about,  or  rather  leaving  him  alone,  they  could  not  keep 
him — whether  it  was  the  longing  of  the  mollusc  for  its  own 
pearly  shell  which  shut  it  from  the  world,  or  that  Ryder, 
like  Charles  Lamb,  really  loved  the  city.  Anyway,  one 
morning  he  slipped  away  and  was  gone — again  safe  in  his 
dirty  den.  Then,  bold  on  paper,  he  wrote  some  explana- 
tion or  other  over  which  Weir  laughed  merrily.  I  think 
it  was  that  he  was  not  well  and  the  quiet  of  the  country 
nights  got  on  his  nerves.  Yet  Ryder  loved  the  country  as 
every  poet  must,  and  I  know  none  of  his  imaginative  painted 
poems  taken  from  the  city  unless  it  be  the  "White  Horse" 
in  the  stall.  He  told  me  he  often  walked  all  night  up  the 
Hudson  till  sunrise,  observing  the  night,  and  I  remember 
he  spoke  of  the  boughs  of  trees,  pendant,  like  great  jewels 
on  the  cheek  of  Night.  When  dear  old  Pinky  was  stricken 
(from  which  he  recovered),  it  was  Weir  who  was  there 
before  any  of  the  relatives  and  sent  him  to  the  hospital. 
It  was  a  terrible  ordeal  for  the  shrinking  Ryder,  but  it 
had  to  be,  to  care  properly  for  him  and  save  his  life.  Mrs. 
Louise  FitzPatrick,  who  was  pupil  and  mother  or  sister  to 
Ryder,  looking  out  for  him  daily,  always  sent  first  for  Weir 

[  *°5  ] 


JULIAS^  ALDSN  WEII^ 

when  anything  was  needed,  and  she  can,  I  imagine,  give 
you  much  concerning  these  two  poet  souls. 

Well,  at  the  time  of  his  return  from  Paris  and  the 
creation  of  the  Parisian  Atelier  in  the  Benedict  Building, 
I  was  Adjutant  of  the  West  Point  Academy,  quartered 
there  with  my  wife  and  two  young  children  —  one  an  infant 
just  born  there  —  and  Weir  came  up  with  the  young  girl 
who  became  his  first  wife,  mother  of  his  children,  and  to 
whom  he  was  at  that  time  engaged.  Mrs.  Wood  and  I 
afterward  spoke  often  of  the  loveliness  of  that  young  pair — 
both  beautiful  —  Weir  a  young  Adonis,  she  adoring  him, 
and  he  her,  the  two  so  boyish  and  girlish.  He  was  show- 
ing her  the  home  and  haunts  of  his  boyhood. 

Now  again  came  a  break  in  our  association,  but  of  course 
not  in  our  friendship.  Though  a  continent  was  always  be- 
tween us,  I  for  my  part  esteemed  him  my  most  lovable  and 
best  loved  friend.  Our  correspondence,  though  not  a  con- 
tinuous flow,  was  constant,  and  I  wish  I  had  access  to  my 
letters  from  him.  In  spite  of  constant  pressure  to  visit  me  and 
the  temptations  I  held  out  of  wonderful  painting  chances  in 
new  fields  and  above  all  wonderful  fishing,  I  never  could 

[  106  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  TfONi 

lure  him  to  the  Coast.  He  had  something  of  Ryder's  re- 
luctance to  get  out  of  the  beaten  paths  and  his  hatred  of 
preparations.  He  was  forced  out,  however,  as  one  of  the 
judges  on  painting  at  the  Panama-Pacific  Exposition  at 
San  Francisco,  and  then  visited  us  at  the  north,  with  Ham- 
ilton (also  artist  and  fisherman),  and  there  all  my  boasts 
of  Pacific  Coast  trout  fishing  fell  down.  It  was  a  poor  year, 
and  I  did  not  realize  how  fished  out  the  streams  near  us 
had  become.  We  even  went  to  the  heart  of  the  Oregon 
Desert,  the  Blitzen  River,  formerly  alive  with  trout,  but 
a  cloudburst  in  the  Stein  Mountains  had  swollen  the  river 
and  made  it  as  thick  as  coffee.  Hassam  had  been  there 
with  me  some  years  before,  and  Weir  remarked  how  well 
he  had  got  the  desert,  its  brilliant  light  and  pale  colors, 
its  spirit,  and  he  said  modestly  that  he  himself  would  be 
afraid  to  attempt  it. 

The  only  good  fishing  he  had  was  with  my  son  Erskine 
in  the  rapids  of  the  Mackenzie  River.  The  risk  of  the 
thing  thrilled  Weir,  and  he  never  ceased  talking  of  how 
he  certainly  would  have  been  drowned  if  Erskine  had  not 
looked  after  him.  He  and  this  son  of  mine  had  long  been 

[  IQ7  ] 


JULIAUi^  ALDSN  WEIT^ 

friends.  When  the  boy  was  a  student  at  Harvard,  Weir 
painted  a  portrait  of  him  which  Hassam  says  is  one  of  the 
best  portrait  paintings  of  our  time.  I  tried  to  buy  from 
Weir  a  water  color  of  some  hounds  lying  before  a  fire- 
place, and  he  who  hated  to  refuse  anybody  anything  flushed 
and  looked  embarrassed  as  he  said :  "  Well,  you  know  those 
are  family  portraits.  It  would  be  like  selling  portraits 
of  the  children."  He  loved  his  dogs.  Yet  when  this  boy 
Erskine  was  married,  Weir  sent  him  one  of  his  fine  oil 
paintings  of  a  pair  of  his  old  black  and  tan  deerhounds. 
There  is  no  greater  tribute  possible  from  one  sportsman  to 
another. 

His  generosity  was  inbred  and  ineradicable  and  some- 
times embarrassing.  One  morning  I  was  wakened  very  early 
by  a  knock  at  my  door  in  the  Hotel  Astor,  New  York,  and 
there  was  Weir  in  great  distress.  They  had  just  received 
word  that  Cora  was  ill  with  typhoid  in  London,  and  they 
had  left  Windham,  Connecticut,  in  the  night  and  were  just 
arrived,  anxious  to  catch  the  "Imperator,"  one  of  those 
immense  German  steamers,  which  was  sailing  early  that 
morning,  but  they  had  no  reservations,  no  cash  in  pocket. 

[ 108  ] 


AN  APPT{ECIA  r/OJAC 

Without  trouble  to  me,  Mr.  Muschenheim,  proprietor  of 
the  hotel,  cashed  Weir's  check  and  set  the  hotel  Trans- 
portation Department  at  work,  so  that  we  landed  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Weir  in  a  stateroom.  On  the  way  to  the  steamer  in 
the  taxi,  Weir  said:  "Say,  old  fellow, you  know  that  moon- 
light you  admired  so  much  at  Montross's  galleries  ?  Well, 
it 's  yours.  I  want  you  to  take  it  as  a  souvenir  of  this  oc- 
casion." After  a  quarrel  in  which  I  positively  refused  and 
which  ended  because  Weir  had  to  attend  to  his  baggage 
and  could  say  no  more,  the  matter  I  supposed  was  dropped, 
but  the  following  Christmas  the  picture  arrived  by  express. 
He  painted  my  portrait,  which  has  been  several  times  ex- 
hibited, and  is  commonly  called  "The  Man  in  the  White 
Shirt."  He  also  painted  portraits  of  my  eldest  son,  before 
alluded  to,  of  my  eldest  daughter,  my  second  son,  and  of 
Mrs.  Wood.  My  own  portrait  he  suggested.  All  the  others 
were  requested  by  me,  and  supposed  to  be  commissions, 
but  I  never  could  get  him  to  take  a  penny.  He  had  a  way 
of  ending  the  discussion  by  some  such  remark  as  this, 
very  sincerely  made :  "  See  here,  don't  deprive  a  fellow  of 
one  of  the  pleasures  he  has  in  his  ability  to  paint." 

[  I09  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEI%^ 

Like  every  artist,  Weir  could  not  coldly  calculate  and 
weigh  dollars  against  inspiration,  and,  like  every  follower 
of  every  form  of  art  in  this  country,  he  had  his  struggle — 
his  ups  and  downs.  At  one  time  when  his  studio  was  over 
a  stable  up  town,  I  bought  for  a  friend  a  lovely  snow  scene, 
and  on  the  way  down  town  Weir  stopped  short  in  the  street 
and  impulsively  took  me  by  the  hand,  and  said:  "Old  fel- 
low, you  '11  never  know  what  the  sale  of  that  picture  meant 
to  me."  Much  later  he  told  me  how  hard  up  he  was.  In  that 
same  studio,  at  a  later  date,  I  greatly  admired  a  large  can- 
vas—  "The  Spreading  Oak,"  a  rugged  old  tree  by  the  road- 
side on  an  early  autumn  day.  The  subject  really  gives  no  idea 
of  the  exquisite  poetry  of  the  picture — the  sense  of  light, 
colored  by  the  afternoon  sun,  and  the  dignity  of  the  compo- 
sition appealed  to  me.  I  said  I  would  like  to  buy  the  picture, 
but  I  could  pay  only  a  few  hundred  dollars  for  it,  and  that 
in  instalments.  Weir  spoke  up  quickly:  "I 'd  rather  have 
you  own  the  picture  at  a  hundred  dollars  than  any  other 
man  at  a  thousand  —  that's  what  I  am  asking  for  it,  and  even 
if  it  was  n't  you,  I  '11  tell  you  why  I 'd  like  you  to  take  it. 
There  is  a  man  comes  here  who  wants  the  picture.  He  is 

[  «°  ] 


AN  APPT{ECIA  T/O^ 

wealthy,  well  able  to  pay  any  price  he  cares  to,  and  he  is 
holding  two  thousand  dollars  before  my  nose  like  a  bait. 
He  was  here  only  two  days  ago,  and  when  he  left  said: 
<  Well,  any  time  you  get  ready  to  take  what  I  have  offered 
you  for  the  picture  it 's  yours,  and  you  might  as  well  take  it 
now,  for  you  will  come  to  it  sooner  or  later.  It 's  not  a  very 
popular  subject.' "  So  I  bought  the  picture.  A  day  or  so  later, 
on  one  of  my  visits  to  the  studio,  Weir  when  I  came  in 
dropped  brush  and  palette  and  came  forward  full  of  joy  and 
excitement. "  Say,  you  know  that  man  I  told  you  about  who 
wanted  £The  Spreading  Oak,'  well  he  was  in  this  morn- 
ing and  said:  'Where  is  the  picture  I  wanted  to  buy?'  I  told 
him  it  was  sold  to  an  acquaintance.  And,  by  jove !  it  did 
me  more  good  to  tell  him  that  and  see  his  face  than  any 
thousand  dollars  in  the  world."  Weir  rubbed  his  hands 
with  mischievous  glee.  He  was  a  boy,  always  a  boy — im- 
pulsive, generous,  light  hearted  or  heavy  hearted  by  turns. 
He  would  not  intentionally  hurt  a  soul,  but  the  one  thing 
his  own  soul  resented  was  the  cold-blooded  exploita- 
tion of  artists  by  so-called  "Lovers  of  Art,"  who  were  in 
fact  mercenary  bargain-hunters.  He  had  suffered  much 

[  111  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEIT^ 

from  it  himself,  as  so  noble  and  open  a  nature  was  bound 
to,  and  to  get  even  with  it  for  once  gave  him  boyish  joy. 

Perhaps  I  ought  to  say  to  you  that  my  own  purchases 
from  Weir,  Ryder,  Warner,  and  others  were  made  when  I 
could  not  afford  it,  and  I  went  into  debt  (generally  to  the 
artists  themselves)  to  make  the  purchases. 

In  another  class  from  the  bargain-hunter  is  the  "Patron 
of  the  Arts,"  newly  rich,  who  collects  partly  from  some 
kind  of  an  embryonic  love  of  beautiful  things,  partly  to  be 
in  fashion,  mostly  as  a  shrewd  investment  with  the  dollar 
uppermost  in  his  mind,  but  who  has  none  of  the  genuine 
aesthetics  in  his  soul.  Weir  told  me  that  in  purchasing  the 
"  Davis  Collection"  he  had  a  number  of  not  important  but 
beautiful  little  pictures  given  him  by  the  Paris,  London,  and 
Dutch  dealers  as  commissions,  which  he  accepted  and  re- 
ported the  whole  list  to  Mr.  Davis  as  a  part  of  his  trustee- 
ship. Mr.  Davis  said,  "Very  well.  Send  them  up  with  the 
rest,"  which  Weir  did.  Had  Mr.  Davis  been  paying  Weir 
anything  as  his  agent,  the  case  would  have  been  differ- 
ent, but  in  fact  he  not  only  paid  Weir  nothing,  but  Weir 
was  loser  on  expenses,  as  unmethodical  artists  always  are. 

[  "2  ] 


AN  APPT{ECIA  T/O^i 

It  was  a  difficult  situation.  No  sensitive  nature  could  fail 
to  report  to  Mr.  Davis,  and  no  sensitive  nature  would  have 
failed  to  say,  "Keep  them  as  your  reward." 

It  is  difficult  and  yet  not  difficult  to  decide  why  a  certain 
week  or  day  or  hour  is  embedded  in  one's  life.  Certainly 
one  of  the  most  clinging  memories  of  my  life  is  a  Thanks- 
giving week  spent  at  Branchville,  and  I  am  sure  Weir  had 
the  same  feeling,  for  we  rarely  got  together  that  we  did  not 
speak  of  it.  It  was  mighty  cold  at  night,  but  the  days  were 
crystalline  and  lovely.  Weir  and  I  would  wander  over  that 
most  picturesque,  if  unprofitable  pile  of  rocks  he  called 
his  farm,  and  which  he  received  from  the  same  Mr.  Davis 
in  exchange  for  a  picture.  Mr.  Davis,  judging  by  the  rocks, 
thought  he  had  the  better  of  the  artist,  and  Weir,  judging 
by  the  inexhaustible  beauty  of  woods,  fields,  hills,  pond, 
granite  boulders,  and  stone  walls  which  he  painted  over 
and  over  again,  knew  that  he  had  the  better  of  the  man 
of  business.  I  say  by  day  we  would  uselessly  and  not  very 
energetically  seek  the  mythical  partridge,  lying  on  the 
sunny  side  of  a  stone  wall  to  eat  our  lunch  and  drink  a  bit 
of  Scotch  and  water.  Sometimes  we  had  the  excitement 

[  "3  ] 


JULIA^ALDSN  WE1\ 

of  ripping  down  a  wall  or  ripping  up  a  hole  to  please  one 
of  Weir's  homely  curs  he  loved  so  much  and  get  a  badger 
which  never  happened.  Once  we  took  a  jug  of  cider.  It 
was  very  heavy,  but  we  remembered  the  coming  hour 
of  realization.  When  we  first  drank  it,  it  was  queer,  but 
passable,  but  kept  getting  darker  and  darker  and  sharper 
and  sharper  till  it  was  an  acrid  ink.  Then  Weir  remem- 
bered he  had  put  a  pound  of  black  powder  into  the  jug 
during  the  summer  as  a  safe  dry  place  for  it !  We  would 
stop  half  an  hour  at  a  time  to  watch  light  effects  on  the 
hills  or  cloud  effects,  and  so,  weary  with  well  doing,  back 
to  the  fine  dinner  Mrs.  Weir  was  sure  to  have  ready,  and 
bottles  of  sparkling  cider,  which  were  the  one  real  excuse 
for  Paul's  existence.  Not  the  so-called  saint,  but  Weir's 
German  farmer. 

Then  the  evening  in  the  big  general  room  which  Charley 
Piatt  had  made  over :  Two  fireplaces,  one  smoked  and  one 
did  n't.  So,  like  the  world  success  and  failure  side  by  side, 
we  called  the  smoky  one  "The  Artist."  The  decorations 
a  huge  hornet's  nest,  an  outspread  hawk,  a  slightly  col- 
ored plaster  cast  of  Weir's  hugest  trout,  such  souvenirs  of 

[  "4  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  TIO^ 

walks  afield,  hunting,  and  fishing.  The  gradual  building 
of  the  home  interior  as  year  by  year  the  abalone  builds  its 
shell. 

My  friend  Muschenheim  of  the  Hotel  Astor  had  sent  up 
some  things,  among  them  a  delicious  Port  du  Salut  Cheese. 
We  would  sit  about  the  fire  watching  the  small  russet 
apples  roast  on  the  hearth,  and  then  we  would  have  crackers 
and  cheese,  and  Mrs.  Weir  and  the  girls  would  go  to  bed, 
and  from  the  kettle  steaming  on  the  hob  I  would  brew  a 
pitcherful  of  real  apple  toddy,  roast  apples,  and  sugar  and 
nutmeg  and  Scotch  or  sometimes,  with  a  real  patriotism, 
Bourbon,  and  Weir  and  I  would  talk  fishing  and  hunting 
and  Balzac  and  Villon  and  Shakespere,  and  Art,  and  the 
Immortality  of  the  Soul.  Whenever  we  struck  the  Immor- 
tality of  the  Soul,  I  knew  it  was  time  to  go  to  bed. 

For  Thanksgiving  Day  a  young  friend  of  Weir's  came 
down  from  Windham  with  a  heavy  valise  which,  when 
opened,  showed  some  dozens  of  partridges,  tightly  packed, 
and  a  shirt,  a  collar,  and  a  pair  of  stockings.  And  Weir 
reproachfully  said:  "Billy,"  or  whatever  he  called  him, 
"why  all  these  clothes?  You  might  have  got  in  another 

[  "5  ] 


JULIA^ALDSN  WEIT^ 

partridge."  So  we  had  partridge  roast  and  broiled  and  fried, 
hot  and  cold,  with  breadcrumb  sauce,  and  with  jelly,  and 
with  rosemary,  and  with  oysters,  but  that  story  of  one's  ever 
growing  tired  of  eating  partridges  we  proved  to  be  a  lie. 

It  seems  to  me  I  could  myself  write  a  book  of  Weir  at 
Branchville.  The  farmer  artist  and  artist  farmer,  digging 
his  ice  pond,  stocking  it  with  bass  that  went  into  the  earth 
and  disappeared  as  toads  do.  Always  fretting  as  much  as 
he  ever  fretted  because  he  could  n't  make  his  rock  pile  pay, 
yet  digging  out  of  it  such  nuggets  as  "The  Red  Barn," 
"The  Spreading  Oak,"  "Cutting  Ice,"  "Oxen  Resting," 
"The  Hunter's  Moon,"  and  "The Red  Bridge."  He  told 
me  when  the  last  named  was  about  completed  on  his  field 
easel,  a  farmer  looked  over  his  shoulder  saying :  "  Paintin' 
the  Old  Bridge,  eh  ?  What  do  you  git  for  a  picture  like 
that?"  "Fifty  dollars,"  said  Weir,  and  then  his  heart  stood 
still  lest  the  old  fellow  might  say:  "I'll  take  it,"  but  his 
fears  were  groundless.  The  reply  was:  "Gee!  You  must 
git  rich." 

My  own  memories  turn  most  to  Branchville  rather  than 
to  Windham,  the  other  Connecticut  home.  I  remember  in 

[  »6  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  T/O^C 

April  we  ran  up  to  Branchville  to  look  around  and  see  the 
spring  come  on.  It  was  very  early,  and  among  its  freshest 
offerings  was  a  lot  of  asparagus — the  first  of  the  season.  Weir 
cut  them  himself  to  be  sure  they  were  just  right,  not  woody, 
and  gave  them  to  Paul  for  our  dinner  (we  were  to  have 
meals  at  the  farmer's).  And  not  the  Fall  of  Paris  or  even 
New  York  could  have  been  so  tragic  to  Weir  (for  my  sake) 
as  his  precious  asparagus  served  in  a  flour  paste  and  satu- 
rated with  nutmeg. 

I  shall  never  forget  a  night  at  Branchville.  Weir  and 
I  pushed  out  into  the  middle  of  the  pond  to  fish  for  the 
theoretical  black  bass  he  was  sure  were  there,  because  he 
himself  had  put  them  there,  but  we  became  indifferent  to 
fishing  under  the  spell  of  the  night— warm,  with  such  a 
mystery  in  the  air  that  the  full  moon  above  us,  instead  of 
having  a  white  brilliancy,  shone  like  a  pearl.  It  seemed  to 
float  in  the  sky  and  we  in  the  perfectly  still  pond  seemed 
to  float  between  heaven  and  earth,  while  as  a  connecting 
link  with  earth  Erskine,  my  son,  and  Paul,  the  farmer, 
splashed  in  the  dark  about  the  edge  of  the  pond  with  a 
lantern,  catching  frogs  for  "  frogs'  legs  a  la  poulette"  next 

[  "7  ] 


JULIAS^  ALD8N  WEI\ 

day,  and  every  now  and  then  the  religious  silence  would 
be  broken  by  Paul's  "  Here  is  a  regular  old  Mudder  Hub- 
bard." This  reminds  me  that  "The  Hunter's  Moon,"  which 
Weir  himself  considered  one  of  his  very  best  canvases,  was 
the  product  of  a  coon  hunt.  The  lights  in  the  picture  are 
the  lanterns  of  the  hunters. 

Presently  the  fishers  for  frogs  went  away  with  a  full  sack 
and  Weir  and  I  sat  in  silence.  "  I  would  like  to  try  to  paint 
this  night  some  day,"  he  said  with  the  quiet,  almost  awed 
voice  the  night  compelled,  "  but  it  is  n't  paintable.  No,  it 
cannot  be  done  by  man;"  and,  after  a  pause,  "What  a 
mystery  it  all  is!" 

Never  have  I  been  struck  so  hard  by  the  loss  of  a  friend 
as  by  Julian's  death.  I  loved  him  —  who  would  not  —  who 
did  not?  He  was  very  lovable,  and  though  it  may  not  be 
to  your  purpose  in  a  memorial  of  him,  I  feel  I  cannot  close 
without  saying  what  a  mate  he  had  in  Mrs.  Weir.  Deeply 
understanding  him,  devoted,  intelligent,  always  serene, 
mothering  the  boy  in  him,  and  lovingly  appreciative  of  his 
genius.  Dear,  dear  Julian !  Well,  so  it  is  —  My  own  time 
cannot  be  so  very  far  away.  We  all  must  go — but  the  world 

[  118  ] 


AN  APP%ECIA  r/OJAC 

has  lost  not  only  a  poet  painter,  a  rare,  rare  genius,  but  a 
gentle  soul. 

I  have  got  to  the  point  where  I  fall  into  musing  and 
had  better  stop.  I  daresay  there  is  a  volume  of  anecdote 
and  reminiscence  which  in  time  would  come  to  me,  but 
this  is  all  that  occurs  to  me  now.  Certainly  it  seems  very 
meagre  to  be  gleaned  from  a  lifetime,  but,  as  I  have  said, 
though  we  were  as  brothers — at  least  so  I  felt — we  were 
not  very  much  together.  It  was  not  as  if  we  had  lived  in 
the  same  city.  Our  contacts  were  only  on  the  rare  occa- 
sions, one  to  three  years  apart,  when  I  would  visit  the 
East. 

I  thank  you  for  your  personal  expressions  of  good  will 
and  would  be  glad  to  meet  and  know  you. 

Laguna  Beach,  California 


P.  S.  Of  course,  at  the  time  of  Ryder's  death  Weir  was 
really  the  whole  prop  and  stay.  He  wrote  me  a  long,  beau- 
tiful letter  about  the  funeral.  His  reverence  for  Ryder  as  an 
artist  was  deep  and  truly  reverent — almost  humble,  not  with 

[  "9  ] 


JULIAN^  ALD8N  WEIT^ 

the  half  patronizing  air  of  some  who  could  not  forget  deai 
old  Pinky's  shabby  clothes  and  queer  shirt,  often  sporting 
as  its  only  studs  those  little  black  things  from  the  laundry. 
But  as  I  have  said,  write  Mrs.  FitzPatrick. 


[ 120  ] 


ILL  US  T%A  TIO^S 


An  Alsatian  Girl 


Fortra.it  of  Robert  IV.  W eir 
The  Artist's  Father 


Roses 


'The  Road  to  the  Old  Farm 


Hhe  High  Pasture 


The  Farm  in  Winter 


Donkey  Ride 


The  Gray  Bodice 


Plowing  for  Buckwheat 


» 


Upland  Pasture 


A  Gentlewoman 


TV/f  Plaza  —  Nocturne 


Pan  and  the  IV olf 


Little  Lizzie  Lynch 


Pussy-lV illows 


The  Spreading  Oak 


'The  Fishing  Party 


Portrait  of  Miss  de  L. 


Knitting  for  Soldiers 


Afternoon  by  the  Fond 


portrait  R//sf  by  Olhi  W arne? 


Portrait  of  Julian  Alden  W tir  by  W olfinger 


A  NNO  U^CSMEU^T 


The  Phillips  Memorial  Gallery  is  now  open  to  the  public  at  1600 
Twenty-first  Street,  N.  W.,  Washington,  D.  C.  This  is  to  be  the  home  of 
the  collection  for  several  years  while  plans  for  the  permanent  building 
are  in  a  formative  and  plastic  state.  Although  it  is  too  soon  to  make 
definite  announcements  of  all  that  we  intend  to  do,  since  force  of  cir- 
cumstances or  changed  conditions  may  cause  our  best  laid  plans  to  be 
altered  or  amended,  nevertheless  the  time  is  ripe  for  telling  about  the 
treasures  and  for  creating  an  interest  in  the  special  and  novel  character 
of  the  Phillips  Memorial.  It  is  to  be  a  home  for  the  fine  arts  and  a  home 
for  all  those  who  love  art  and  go  to  it  for  solace  and  spiritual  refresh- 
ment. We  wish  therefore  to  create  an  atmosphere  which  is  attractive  and 
intimate  rather  than  grandiose  and  institutional ;  where  visitors  will  feel 
inclined  to  linger  and  to  which  they  will  wish  to  return  again  and  again 
for  a  special  sort  of  pleasure  or  for  special  study.  The  ultimate  building 
must  not  be  large,  no  matter  to  what  size  the  collection  may  grow.  Our 
idea  is  not  to  show  all  of  our  treasures  at  once,  but  in  ever  varied  and  pur- 
poseful exhibitions,  arranging  the  collection  in  units  which  would  be 
frequently  changed  so  that  the  walls  of  the  various  rooms  would  undergo 
interesting  transformations.  No  crowding  of  the  walls  nor  disfiguring 
additions  to  the  building  as  the  collections  grow  can  ever  be  permitted 
to  destroy  the  harmony  of  our  rooms  and  the  essentially  domestic  char- 
acter of  the  architecture  as  a  whole.  In  the  fireproof  storage  vaults  light 
and  air  will  be  supplied  and  the  paintings  hung  on  sliding  screens  so  that 


they  can  be  at  all  times  available  to  the  visitors.  These  storage  vaults  should 
be  made  to  communicate  with  the  auditorium  which  we  propose  to  have 
for  plays,  concerts  and  lectures,  and  with  the  rooms  for  special  study  so 
that  the  lecturers  and  the  students  may  avail  themselves  of  the  actual 
works  of  art  and  not  have  to  resort  to  lantern  slides  and  photographs.  We 
intend  to  have  an  art  library  containing  especially  books  on  the  painters 
represented  in  the  collection,  also  portfolios  of  prints  and  of  original  draw- 
ings. It  is  not  our  present  intention  to  conduct  an  art  school  in  the  com- 
monly accepted  sense  of  the  word.  There  may  be  studios  in  the  building. 
We  propose  that  the  architecture  shall  be  of  some  domestic  type  combin- 
ing sensuous  and  subtle  beauty  with  simplicity  and  quiet  charm — some  such 
low  and  rambling  type,  adaptable  to  sky-lit  galleries,  as  the  Italian  Villa 
or  our  own  Southern  Colonial  manor  house.  We  hope  for  a  site  command- 
ing a  view  of  the  beautiful  city  of  Washington,  for  wooded  grounds  laid 
out  with  terraces  and  gardens  modified  like  the  building  itself,  if  Italian, 
to  conform  with  our  national  character  and  appropriate  not  only  to  the 
architecture  but  to  the  local  conditions  of  topography  and  climate. 

It  is  proposed  that  each  room  in  the  building  shall  be  regarded  as  an 
aesthetic  unit,  the  decorative  accessories  changed  with  the  changes  in  the 
exhibitions.  Occasionally  rooms  will  be  devoted  to  the  display  of  the  best 
works  by  selected  artists,  rooms  which  will  represent  them  from  every 
aspect  of  their  character  and  genius,  and  to  which  their  admirers  will  wish 
to  make  pilgrimages  to  renew  their  interest  and  to  refresh  their  faith. 
Occasionally  rooms  will  be  given  educational  intention.  The  origin  and 
growth  of  certain  aesthetic  tendencies  will  be  traced  back  to  the  early 


periods  of  art's  history.  The  collection  is  to  be  devoted  essentially  to  the 
art  of  our  own  time,  but  works  of  any  period,  no  matter  how  remote,  may 
be  purchased  or  borrowed  for  educational  purposes.  In  this  we  can  show 
the  artist's  evolving  and  revolving  interestsand  aptitudes.  Groups  of  works 
by  artists  of  similar  temperaments  and  of  related  aims  would  have  special 
appeal  for  kindred  spirits  and  would  help  to  clarify  for  students  certain 
significant  aspects  of  the  creative  impulse  through  the  ages.  The  exhibi- 
tion units  will  be  composed  not  only  of  groups  of  related  artists  showing 
similar  training  and  intention,  but  also  of  other  groups  teaching  by  means 
of  contrasted  merits  that  in  the  house  of  art  there  are  many  mansions.  It 
will  be  interesting  to  present  contrasts  of  similar  subj  ects  treated  at  differ- 
ent times  in  different  manners,  thus  teaching  history  and  art  simultane- 
ously, to  their  mutual  advantage.  Besides  the  rearrangement  and  alternat- 
ing reviews  of  the  permanent  collections  in  the  various  rooms,  there  will 
be  a  long  gallery  devoted  to  all  kinds  of  exhibitions  of  contemporary  art. 
Our  most  enthusiastic  purpose  will  be  to  reveal  the  richness  of  the  art  cre- 
ated in  our  United  States,  to  stimulate  our  native  artists  and  afford  them 
inspiration.   In  all  the  rooms  the  setting  will  be  carefully  planned  and 
executed  with  the  object  of  enhancing  the  effect  of  the  paintings,  of 
emphasizing  their  essential  character  and  of  producing  a  sympathetic  back- 
ground and  a  perfect  ensemble.  For  instance,  in  the  Twachtman  room, 
those  who  know  the  marvelous  nuances  of  color,  opalescent  and  phosphor- 
escent, in  the  works  of  this  great  master  will  be  delighted  to  find  these 
subtle  felicities  echoed  in  the  background  in  choice  bits  of  Chinese  pottery, 
Persian  lustre  ware  or  Greek  glass.  To  complete  the  ensemble  of  the  room, 


imagine  a  black  carpet  and  a  wall  like  that  in  our  present  gallery,  where  a 
gray,  transparent  mesh  hangs  over  the  plaster,  which  is  toned  a  delicate 
apricot.  Only  time  can  tell  whether  our  funds  will  be  sufficient  to  pur- 
chase antique  potteries  and  porcelain,  bronzes  and  ivories,  carved  furniture, 
tapestry,  stained  glass.  Our  modern  sculptors  however,  are  quite  as  distin- 
guished as  our  painters  and  worthy  of  the  same  support  and  faith,  and  as  for 
our  potters  and  goldsmiths,  our  craftsmen  of  all  kinds,  if  they  are  yet  inferior 
to  the  men  of  the  earlier  dynasties  of  the  Orient  or  of  the  middle  age  of 
Europe,  it  is  only  a  question  of  relative  quality.  By  our  encouragement  of 
native  and  contemporary  work  we  can  bring  about  another  era  of  loving 
and  inspired  handicraft  which  will  further  glorify  the  meaning  of  common 
things.  It  will  not  be  our  intention  to  compete  with  the  great  museums  in 
assembling  obj  ects  of  historic  interest  nor  to  have  every  phase  and  period 
in  the  history  of  fine  and  applied  art  represented  with  examples.  We  must 
specialize  in  painting,  more  particularly  in  modern  painting,  and  it  will  be 
our  pleasure  to  show  how  our  American  artists  maintain  their  equality  with, 
if  not  indeed  their  superiority  to,  their  more  famous  foreign  contempora- 
ries. In  order  to  make  better  known  throughout  the  world  the  living 
American  artists  whose  work  we  believe  to  be  of  enduring  worth,  we  pro- 
pose to  inaugurate  the  policy  of  devoting  each  year  to  a  foreign  or  Amer- 
ican gallery  the  work  of  an  American  artist  who  had  not  hitherto  been 
represented  in  that  collection. 

We  are  making  no  effort  as  yet  to  raise  sums  of  money  through  bene- 
factions from  wealthy  patrons — to  which  course  we  would  turn  only  in 
case  we  later  decided  to  enlarge  the  educational  scope  of  the  gallery  and 


employ  a  staff  of  resident  workers  and  specialists.  Such  a  change  of  policy- 
would  bring  us  into  competition  with  the  museums  of  the  country  which 
at  present  we  regard  with  respect  from  the  distance  that  separates  the  pri- 
vate dwelling  house  from  the  institution  of  learning.  Of  course  we  mean  to 
afford  ample  opportunities  for  study.  Our  lectures  will  not  be  comic  mono- 
logues, nor  our  concerts,  j  azz,  nor  our  library  shelves  devoted  to  magazines 
on  the  movies.  Nevertheless  we  wish  to  create  an  atmosphere  of  culture 
in  which  people  will  feel  mentally  stimulated  with  a  desire  for  knowledge 
but  one  in  which  there  is  no  air  of  academic  wisdom  and  formality.  In 
other  words  we  wish  to  popularize  what  is  best  in  art  by  the  attractiveness  of 
our  methods  of  presentation  without  making  concessions  to  the  public  in  mat- 
ters of  taste  or  in  the  standards  set  for  works  of  art  endorsed  by  the  gallery. 
If  we  can  make  our  visitors  feel  at  home  in  the  midst  of  beautiful  things 
and  subconsciously  stimulated  while  consciously  rested  and  refreshed,  we 
shall  feel  that  they  will  eventually  absorb  the  point  of  view  of  our  artists 
and  remain  thereafter  on  the  same  aesthetic  levels.  We  believe  that  it  is 
never  right  to  make  art  easy  and  popular  at  the  risk  of  making  it  commer- 
cial and  indolently  conventional.  If  a  renaissance  of  art  is  to  come  in  our 
time  it  must  come  not  from  the  ever  devoted  few  but  from  the  awakened 
interest  and  enlightened  patronage  of  the  many.  Our  hope,  therefore,  is 
that  by  bringing  art  to  the  people  in  the  most  attractive  way  without  lower- 
ing our  standards  we  may  relate  beauty  to  their  lives  for  their  inspiration  and 
solace  without  relinquishing  our  duty  of  guiding  them  to  the  heights  of 
art  and  of  keeping  the  fires  burning  on  our  own  altars. 

We  are  conscious  of  a  desire  to  demonstrate  that  what  we  are  doing 


others  can  do,  and  that  similar  Memorial  Galleries  can  be  launched  wher- 
ever there  is  a  wish  and  a  need  for  them.  We  would  be  glad  if  our  build- 
ing could  be  ultimately  made  a  memorial  composed  of  memorials;  in  other 
words,  of  rooms  or  exhibition  units  dedicated  to  the  memory  of  the  beloved 
dead.  We  shall  specialize  in  modern  painting.  Our  inspired  predecessor, 
Mr.  Freer,  specialized  in  Chinese  kakemonos.  The  next  Memorial  Gal- 
lery might  specialize  in  Italian  primitives,  or  in  Colonial  furniture,  or  in 
Flemish  tapestries,  or  in  Gothic  glass.  If  our  plan  is  worthy  of  our  effort 
it  will  be  as  a  beacon  light  for  others.  It  is  practical  and  in  pursuit  of  two 
definite  democratic  ideals — the  ideal  of  art  and  the  ideal  of  service. 

Although  we  are  dreaming  already  of  the  remote  future  and  planning 
for  posterity,  yet  we  welcome  interest  in  our  modest  beginnings  and  we 
invite  all  who  care  to  come  to  the  two  small  rooms  which  must  constitute 
for  the  present  the  home  of  the  Phillips  Memorial  Art  Gallery. 


«  THE  PHILLIPS  PUBLICATIONS" 

We  plan  to  take  the  Public  into  our  confidence  at  the  outset  of  our 
enterprise  and  to  send  the  preceding  announcement  far  and  wide. 

As  the  exhibition  units  become  ready  for  presentation  to  the  Public  we 
shall  welcome  dignified  publicity.  Throughout  the  formative  period  in 
the  life  of  the  Phillips  Memorial  we  wish  to  proclaim  its  often  unprece- 
dented purposes  and  to  cultivate  the  soil  of  public  opinion.  Thus  we  hope 
to  stimulate  a  demand  for  what  we  can  supply.  The  work  of  criticism  and 
commentary,  can  and  must  accompany  and  even  anticipate  our  exhibitions. 

Just  as  in  our  exhibitions  we  shall  show  American  painting  and  European 
painting  side  by  side,  instead  of  exhibiting  our  native  work  separately  as  if 
it  were  a  by-product,  so  we  propose  to  publish  two  series  of  books  on  Art 
in  which  American  painting  will  be  regarded  as  part  of  the  main  channel 
of  all  artistic  progress. 

First  there  will  be  a  series  of  monographs  on  great  artists  of  the  past 
represented  in  the  Phillips  Memorial  collection.  The  text  will  be  written 
by  various  critics  of  established  reputation  on  subj  ects  which  make  to  them 
a  special  appeal. 

Cooperating  with  Duncan  Phillips  in  the  preparation  of  these  papers 

will  be  such  distinguished  authors  and  artists  as 

Frank  Jewett  Mather,  Jr. 
Royal  Cortissoz 
Guy  Pene  du  Bois 
Mahonri  Young 

and  others. 

These  numbered  monographs  will  offer  symposia  of  appreciation,  com- 
pact information  and  many  illustrations  (the  Weir  book  will  have  3  2  illus- 
trations ;  the  Daumier  48),  relating  to  the  careers  of  great  artists  whose  lives 


are  finished  and  whose  work  thereafter  can  be  completely  considered  in 
successive  stages  of  development  and  in  every  medium  through  which  they 
have  expressed  themselves. 

In  our  second  series  of  art  books  we  shall  dare  to  declare  our  faith  in 
and  our  admiration  for  the  work  of  some  living  painters  and  we  hope  to 
help  them  win  the  fame,  esteem,  and  influence  they  deserve  during  their 
lives,  instead  of  discreetly  waiting  until  after  they  are  gone  for  time  to 
appraise  their  achievement. 

This  second  series  will  contain  a  number  of  short  essays  by  Duncan 
Phillips  on  the  art  of  painters  living  and  dead,  foreign  and  American,  thus 
affording  a  variety  of  interest  and  a  contrast  of  artistic  temperaments  and 
purposes. 

The  illustrations  will  be  confined  to  reproductions  of  paintings  in  the 
Phillips  Memorial  collection. 

These  half-tone  prints,  including  some  in  color,  will  be  published  from 
our  negatives,  separate  from  the  books,  on  sheets  or  cards  of  several  sizes, 
to  be  sold  at  a  low  cost  for  the  special  benefit  of  artists  and  students  of  art. 
There  will  also  be  reprints  in  pamphlet  form  of  the  essays  in  both  series  of 
books  especially  printed  for  the  use  of  artists  and  students. 

Lantern  slides  will  be  furnished  to  lecturers  on  application. 


Flower  Girl 


Woodland  Rocks 


/.  Aid  en  Weir 


Building  the  Dam 


Visiting  Neighbors 


Reflections 


Roses 


LIST  OF  TAISiTINQS 


LIST  OF  TA/NT/J^GS 

This  Catalogue  of  paintings  by  Weir  has  been  prepared  by 
Miss  Dorothy  Weir,  daughter  of  the  artist,  and  is  a  complete 
list  of  all  of  Weirs  paintings  which  are  known  to  the  family 
at  this  date.  The  perpendicular  measurement  is  given  first. 


1870-  1879 


TITLE 

SIZE 

OWNER 

Head  of  an  Old  Man.  Dated  1872 

17x13 

Jeune  Fille.  Dated  1875 

14X  10^ 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

A  Brittany  Interior.  Dated  1875 

3°  *34 

Mrs.  George  Page  Ely 

The  Oldest  Inhabitant.  Dated  1876 

66x32 

Smith  College 

Portrait  of  Thomas  L.  James.  Dated  1878 

Portrait  of  Robert  W.  Weir.  1879 

46x36 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Washerwomen  of  Brittany 

At  the  Water  Trough 

Brittany 

15x25^ 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

A  Normandy  Farm 

9x13^ 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

A  Breton  Girl 

13x9^ 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

The  Entombment  of  Christ 

N.  E.  Montross 

Landscape 

20x24 

N.  E.  Montross 

The  Good  Samaritan 

Portrait  of  an  Unknown  Man 

36x29 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Portrait  of  an  Old  Gentleman 

36x29 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Copy  of  Velasquez 

Mrs.  Lucy  W.  Hewitt 

Copy  of  Velasquez  —  Philip  IV 

24x20 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Copy  of  Rembrandt's  Mother 

24x20 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Copy  of  Franz  Hals 

24  x  20 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Copy  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  by  Gainsborough 

27  x  20 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Head  of  a  Girl 

20x  l6 

[  «S  1 


JUL/A^ALDSN  WEIT^ 


1880 -1889 


TITLE 

Mill  at  Dordt.  1881 
Portrait  of  Miss  C.  M.  Weir.  1882 
Portrait  of  Roderick  Terry,  Jr.  1882 
The  Little  Sabot.  1882 
Fading  Day.  Dated  1884 
The  First  Step.  1884 
The  Muse  of  Music.  Dated' '84 
Portrait  of  a  Lady  in  a  Black  Lace  Dress. 

Dated  1885 
Brittany  Landscape.  Dated  1885 
Dogs  on  the  Hearth.  Dated  1886 
The  Lane.  About  1 886 
Lengthening  Shadows.  Dated  1887 
Caro.  Dated  1887 
Landscape.  Dated  1887 
The  Miniature.  Dated  1888 
Idle  Hours.  Dated  1888 
Reflections 
Flora 

Children  Burying  a  Bird 
Snowstorm  in  the  City 
Portrait  of  a  Lady  with  a  Dog 
Bush,  a  Dog 
Against  the  Window 
Portrait  of  Olin  Warner 
Portrait  of  Olin  Warner 
Portrait  of  Warren  Delano 
Portrait  of  Richard  Grant  White 
Portrait  of  John  Gilbert  45  x  34 

Portrait  of  Edwin  Booth 

Portrait  of  Edwin  S.  Connor  30x25 


SIZE  OWNER 
35  x  24  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Miss  C.  M.  Weir 
21^  x  1 7       Dr.  Roderick  Terry 

15x26  Late  Harry  W.  Jones 


44  x  20 


36*3° 


11^  xi6^ 

25  X  21 

30x22^ 
24^  x20^ 


22  x  18 

49x38 
19^  X38 
36x30 

35^  xi8^ 

21  x  16 


The  Lotos  Club 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
T.  A.  Valentine 

Phillips  Memorial  Gallery 

Mrs.  George  Page  Ely 
Desmond  FitzGerald 
Mrs.  William  E.  Carlin 
Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art 


F.  K.  M.  Rehn 

Miss  C.  M.  Weir 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Mrs.  Olin  Warner 

National  Academy  of  Design 

Mrs.  Stanford  White 
The  Players'  Club 

The  Players'  Club 


[  126  ] 


LIST  OF  TAINTI^JJS 


TITLE 

Portrait  of  R.  H.  Stoddard 
Portrait  of  Wyatt  Eaton 
Portrait  of  Robert  C.  Minor 
Portrait  of  J.  Alden  Weir 
Portrait  of  John  F.  Weir 
Portrait  of  George  W.  Maynard 
Portrait  of  Alexander  W.  Weir 
Portrait  of  General  John  Pitman 
Portrait  of  Mr.  L. 
Portrait  of  a  Lady  in  White 
The  Mother 

Portrait  of  John  H.  Twachtman 

Portrait  of  Mrs.  Thomas  Bradley 

The  Blind  Flower  Seller 

Deer  Hounds 

Miss  Peggy  Cottier 

Nasturtiums 

In  the  Shadow 

Drilling  Rock 

The  Orange  Ribbon 

The  Bird  House 

In  the  Shade  of  a  Tree 

The  Hunter 

Portrait  of  a  Child 

In  the  Adirondacks 

A  Connecticut  Farm 

The  Farmer's  Lawn 

The  Road  to  Nowhere 

A  Quiet  Home 

A  Path  in  the  Woods 

A  Pasture  Lot 

Solitude 

A  Bather 


SIZE 

OWNER 

TJ  A  JJ 

The  Century  Club 

11  x  18 

National  Gallery 

21  x  16 

National  Academy  of  Design 

21  x  l6 

National  Academy  of  Design 

J     /s  J 

lohn  F.  Weir 

National  Academy  of  Design 

Colonel  H.  C.  Weir 

General  John  Pitman 

17x14 

Mrs.  T.  Alden  Weir 

14.  x  27 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

44  X  34. 

Mrs.  Lloyd  Williams 

Cincinnati  Art  Museum 

Cecil  and  Kenneth  Bradley 

Brooklyn  Museum 

36x30 

Erskine  Wood 

21  x  16 

Mrs.  Lloyd  Williams 

22  x  I  3  J<< 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

20  x  2A 

1 

Mrs.  T.  Alden  Weir 

J 

2C  x  20 

Lady  Van  Home 

26^  x  17^ 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

6q  x 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

13^  X2lj^ 

3 ■»  x45 

Albert  E.  McVitty 

Dr.  Edward  L.  Partridge 

Dr.  Edward  L.  Partridge 

16X24 

21  x  15 

16x9^ 

8^  XI2^ 

10x7^ 

[  I27  ] 


JULIAN^  ALDSN  WEIT^ 


TITLE 

SIZE 

OWNER 

T?      1       ft  Jf 

Lady  Morning 

I5X  18 

Late  October 

i8x  14 

bame 

15  x20^ 

I  he  Moon  Obscured 

20x29 

Oriana 

20x  17^ 

Smith  College 

Willow  rirook 

21  y2  x  25 

XL  ~   T  1       £"  XT  J 

1  he  Land  or  Nod 

30x46 

TV  >f           1  *    I-  a. 

Moonlight 

10  x  16 

Colonel  C.  E.  S.  Wood 

bummer-Land 

20^  x  15 

Dr.  Roderick  Terry 

1  he  Lawn 

$*A  x  12^ 

A  Bit  of  Blue 

7X5 

A     TV  If  1  l~x 

A  Misty  Day 

13^  x9 

(jray  October 

9x12 

XT         l  1        •  . 

Neighboring  Cottage 

12  x  16 

Alexander  M.  Hudnut 

1  he  Miniature 

24^  x20 

Dutch  Gray  beard  Jug 

VA  x6 

A  Belt  of  Wood 

15x26 

Ideal  Head 

21x17 

The  Christmas  Tree 

36x24 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

In  the  Studio 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

In  the  Living-Room 

25x30 

|\    ft                  T           Alt  TXT 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

The  Violet 

20^4  x  l624 

Samuel  S.  White,  3d 

Interior  of  a  Room 

Colonel  H.  C.  Weir 

Still  Life 

Silver  Chalice  with  roses. 

Dated  1882 

12x9 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Roses  in  two  small  Venetian  vases,  with 

silverchalice  in  the  back] 

ground.  Dated 

1882 

14X  10 

Charles  L.  Baldwin 

Flowers:  A  white  bowl  filled  with  dan- 

delions. Dated  1882 

15^x23^ 

Smith  College 

Roses.  Dated  1883 

23x15 

r 

128  1 

LIST  OF  TAINTI^GS 


TITLE  SIZE 

Roses.  Dated  1884  8x10 
The  Delft  Plate  :  A  Delft  plate  with  five 
peaches  in  it  on  left.  Pewter  tankard 
with  a  spray  of  honeysuckle  in  it  on 
right.  Dated  1888  24x13^ 
Pheasants.  Dated  1889  18x30 
Roses:  A  mass  of  pink  and  white  Mar- 
shal Niel  roses  in  a  bowl 
White  roses  in  a  white  china  bowl,  silver 
chalice  at  the  right.  Bas-relief  of  St. 
John  the  Baptist  in  the  background 
White  roses  in  a  white  china  bowl  in 
the  centre,  other  roses  in  a  slender 
white  vase  on  the  right.  Bas-relief  by 
Donatello  in  the  background  35  x  25 

Gray  Japanese  jar  filled  with  flowers  and 

a  silver  chalice  21x13 
Silver  cup,  Japanese  bronze  and  red  taper 
Rose  and  Kettle  lY^^S^i 
Flowers:  Tall  jar  and  a  small  vase,  both 
filled  with  tulips  and  other  flowers  on 
the  right,  and  a  bowl  full  of  flowers 
placed  on  two  books  on  the  left.  Tall 
Chinese  blue  and  white  vase,  brass 
lantern,  pewter  plate, and  some  flowers 
on  a  table.  In  the  background  is  the 
wheel  of  a  spinning-wheel  29^  X48 

Grapes,  Knife,  and  Glass  9X  x3 

Pewter  Pitcher  20x14 
Roses :  A  cluster  of  pale  yellow  and  pink 

roses  on  a  table  8  x  10 

Fruit:  A  branch  of  apples  hangs  on  the 
wall,  other  apples  and  a  tomato  are 
grouped  on  a  table  below  it.  The  table 
is  covered  with  a  white  cloth  21x17 


OWNER 
Mrs.  Stanford  White 


Smith  College 
Childe  Hassam 


S}4  xio        Emil  Carlsen 


33^  x2i       Charles  T.  Palmer 


Phillips  Memorial  Gallery 


Mrs.  George  Page  Ely 


The  Feragil  Galleries 


Yale  School  of  Fine  Arts 
Phillips  Memorial  Gallery 
Charles  T.  Palmer 


[  I29  ] 


JULIA^  ALD8N  WEIT^ 


TITLE  SIZE 

Flowers  :  Flowers  in  a  pewter  mug  and 
a  china  shoe 

Flowers:  Roses  in  a  silver  bowl  on  a 
mahogany  table 

Soup  tureen,  grape  fruit,  celery,  toma- 
toes, oranges,  and  laurel  on  a  table 
covered  with  a  white  cloth.  A  pewter 
plate  and  a  blue  and  white  Chinese 
plate  stand  against  the  wall  in  the  back- 
ground 24^x36 

Fruit  in  a  glass  compote  on  a  white  cloth  18x14 


OWNER 


21x15^       Mrs.  John  A.  Rutherfurd 


Miss  C.  M.  Weir 


Mrs.  Helen  Ladd  Corbett 
Alden  Twachtman 


The  Late  80'/  or  Early  90V 


A  Misty  Day,  Autumn 

22x32^ 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

The  Setting  Sun 

19^  X27 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Landscape 

15^  x26^ 

H.  C.  Henry 

A  Cloudy  Day 

12^  x  l6 

A  Neighboring  Farm 

22  x  27 

The  Road  to  the  Farm 

22^  x  16 

Charles  L.  Baldwin 

The  Red  Barn 

30x25 

Colonel-  C.  E.  S.  Wood 

Rocks  in  the  Sun 

\oy2  x  1 5 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

The  Stone  Wall 

i6x  12 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Scudding  Clouds  in  June 

Evening 

Indian  Summer 

John  E.  Cowdin 

A  Frosty  Morning 

Autumn 

Summer-Land 

The  Edge  of  the  Wood 

The  Barnyard 

November 

In  the  Woods 

[  no  ] 


LIST  OF  TAINTINJJS 


TITLE  SIZE  OWNER 

The  Pasture  Lot 
The  Young  Student 
A  Drizzly  Day 
The  Pond 
Across  the  Fields 
The  Hillside 
In  the  Field 

Afternoon  on  the  Hillside 
After  the  Snowstorm 
The  Black  Alders 


189O-  1899 


Lady  Reading.  Dated  1890 

I  I  7*2  x  1 6 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Portrait  of  a  Lady  with  a  Venetian  Vase. 

Dated  1 8 90 

36x28 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

The  White  Cravat.  Dated  1890 

34x25 

Mrs.  George  Page  Ely 

The  Open  Book.  Dated  189 1 

31x29 

Mrs.  Helen  Ladd  Corbett 

Early  Moonrise.  Dated  1891 

34x24^ 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Midday.  Dated  1891 

34x24 

C.  A.  Du  Bois 

Portrait  of  a  Small  Girl.  1891 

18x14 

H.  A.  Hammond  Smith 

In  the  Days  of  Pinafores.  1893 

34x27 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Dorothy.  1893 

33*24 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Thread  Mills.  1893 

ziy2  x26 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Willimantic  Thread  Mills.  1893 

24K  x33^ 

Brooklyn  Museum 

Baby  Cora.  1894 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Autumn  Stroll.  1894 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Sunlight.  Dated  1894 

27x34 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Child  and  Nurse.  1894 

38x30}/ 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

The  Farm  in  Winter.  Dated  1894 

Charles  V.  Wheeler 

Loading  Ice.  1894 

19^  X24 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Cutting  Ice.  1894 

Henry  Ladd  Corbett 

Snow  Scene.  1894 

8x12 

Miss  Cara  Haynes 

The  Coming  Snowstorm.  1894 

[  *3i  ] 

JULIA^ALDSN  WEIT^ 


TITLE 

A  Fog  in  Winter.  1 894 

Melting  Snow.  1894 

Woods  in  Snow.  1894 

Hillside  in  Snow.  1894 

Portrait  of  Captain  Zalinski.  1895 

Reflections  in  the  Mirror.  Dated  1896 

Melting  Snow.  Dated  1897 

The  Factory  Village.  Dated  1897 

Willimantic.  1897 

Early  Fall.  Dated  1898 

The  Black  Hat.  Dated  1898 

The  Gray  Bodice.  Dated  1898 

Portrait  of  Erskine  Wood.  Dated  1899 

The  Donkey  Ride.  1899 

In  the  Sun.  Dated  1899 

On  the  Porch 

A  Basket  of  Laurel 

Visiting  the  Rabbit  Hutch 

Land  of  Nod 

October  Sunshine 

Noonday  Rest 

Misty  Morning 

Spring 

The  Farm  —  Spring 

Apple  Blossoms 

Apricot  in  Blossom 

Portrait  of  General  Quincy  Gillmore 

Portrait  of  Childe  Hassam 

Autumn  Rain 

Branchville  in  Early  Autumn 
Wild  Lilies 
Maple  Inn 

Plowing  for  Buckwheat 


SIZE 

20x24 
21  x  25 


27^  xI5 

24  x  20 

30x40 

12  x  16 
17x21 

30 %  xi8 

24x20 
49  X40 

26x  16 
33^  *24 

25  x  20 


OWNER 


20x24 
23x29 


50x40 
30x25 
16x24 
30x25 
33x24 


[  *32  ] 


R.  C.  and  N.  M.  Vose 
Mrs.  J.  A.  Rutherfurd 


Rhode  Island  School  ofDesign 
Cincinnati  Art  Museum 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
Feragil  Gallery 
Colonel  C.  E.  S.  Wood 
Miss  Dorothy  Weir 
Art  Institute  of  Chicago 
Colonel  C.  E.  S.  Wood 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
Colonel  C.  E.  S.  Wood 


Philadelphia  Art  Museum 

R.  C.  and  N.  M.  Vose 
Mrs.  George  Page  Ely 


West  Point  Military  Academy 
National  Academy  of  Design 
R.  C.  and  N.  M.  Vose 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Carnegie  Institute 


LIST  OF  TAINTINJ3S 


TITLE 

Summer 

Summer  Pastime 
Summer  in  Connecticut 
The  Red  Bridge 
The  Green  Bodice 
An  Alsatian  Girl 
The  Green  Dress 
The  Feather  Boa 
The  Two  Sisters 
The  Truants 
The  Sand  Pit 
Miss  Pierson 
Girl  in  Pink 

Sketch  for  a  Portrait  of  Mrs.  Robert 

Weir 
Purple  Iris 
Girl  in  White 
Paul  Remy 
Figure  Piece 
A  Summer  Day 


SIZE  OWNER 

20x24  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

24  x  20  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

20  x  24  F.  S.  Shaw 

24^6x33/4  Metropolitan  Museum 

33^x24^  Metropolitan  Museum 

24x18  Phillips  Memorial  Gallery 

Gilbert  S.  McClintock 

18x12  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

49  V\  x  39  XA  Mrs.  Marshall  Field 

29x38  R.  C.  and  N.  M.  Vose 


16  x  12  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

24x20  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

24x20  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

20x24  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

27  x  16  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

30x25  H.  A.  Hammond  Smith 

24x20  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 


I9OO- I9O9 


Girl  with  Black  Hat.  Dated  1 900 
The  Yellow  Turban.  Dated  1900 
Portrait  of  Col.  C.  E.  S.  Wood.  1901 
Portrait  of  a  Lady.  Dated  1902 
The  Barn.  1904 

The  Haunt  of  the  Woodcock.  1905 
Hunting  the  Raccoon.  1905 
The  Shadow  of  my  Studio.  1905 
Upland  Pasture.  1905 


29^  x24^£  Portland  Art  Association 

24x20  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

35  x  28  Colonel  C.  E.  S.  Wood 

50x40  Mrs.  Helen  Ladd  Corbett 

20x24  Phillips  Memorial  Gallery 

Edmund  C.  Tarbell 

39^x49^  National  Gallery 


[  "33  ] 


JULIA^ALDSN  WEIT^ 


TTTT  V 
111  IT, 

CT71? 

UVVNiK 

A  Gentlewoman.  1900 

30x24^ 

National  Gallery 

n  1             1      [•           1        r\      •11*                r    1         f~X  O 

Sketch  for  the  Building  of  the  Dam.  1900 

22  x  19 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

1  he  Building  or  the  Dam.  1900 

30x40 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

1  he  Rose  rink  Bodice.  1909 

30x25 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

1  he  Hunters  Moon.  1909 

51  X40 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Portrait  of  Mrs.  rrank  Dale  La  Lanne. 

1909 

Miss  Frances  La  Lanne 

Portrait  of  Maxwell  Wood 

24  X  20 

colonel  c  iL.  b.  wood 

Portrait  of  Mrs.  David  T.  Honeyman 

35><27 

colonel  c  iL.  0.  wood 

rortraii  01  ivirs.  vv  oou 

32x25 

coionei  c      o.  w  ood 

Pickerel  Pool 

25M  x2i/2 

ivirs.  J.  Alden  weir 

M^other  and  Daughter 

72  *3°>2 

l\/Ti-o                   TT   f^o _i ; ~ 

ivirs.  w  uiiam  n,.  carnn 

Portrait  r»f  1VT rc     ToVin    A     R  iithprfnrrl 
1  U1L141L  Ul   IVlIa.  JUI1I1   n.   JXULJ1CI  1  Ul  u 

49  x  30/2 

A/Trc     TfiVm    A     1?  ntVi^rfiirrl 
J.VX1S.  JUIlll  i\ .  IV  UlllCI  1  Ul  U 

rortrait  or  ivirs.  vv  eir 

30x25 

ivirs.  j .  /viaen  vv  eir 

rortrait  or  ivirs.  n,iy 

26x21 

Mrs.  George  Page  Ely 

Portrait  of  Miss  Dorothy  Weir 

20^2  x  23 

Miss  Dorothy  W^eir 

Portrait  of  Mrs.  Carlin 

24  X  20 

ivirs.  wniiam  r,.  carlin 

rnnip 

21x17 

ivirs.  j.  Aiuen  weir 

visiting  i\eignDors 

2  5  x  35 

I'hi  1 1 1  nc    ^/l    m  nvii  I-»ill/^rj7 

rinmpb  ivicmoi  iai  vjaiicry 

Portrait  of  a  Boy 

24  X  20 

ivirs.  j.  Alden  weir 

A  Bowl  of  Roses 

20  x  24 

A/T  rc      T      A  AATa'tr 

ivirs.  j .  Aiuen  weir 

i  ne  uiq  i^aurei  r>usn 

X 

IVTrc    T    Alrl*»n  Wpir 

ivirs.  j.  /\iuen  vv  eir 

Overhanging  Trees 

x-J.  X  -iU 

A/1  rc    T    Alrl^n   AAT^i  r 

ivir».  j  .  /\iucii  vv  eir 

Chestnut  Trees  in  Blossom 

14X 17^ 

Miss  Dorothy  Weir 

The  Red  Drapery 

30  x  1 8 

ivirs.  j.  Aiaen  weir 

Head  of  a  Young  Girl 

24  x  20 

\  A  »*n        T        A  1  .1  ^1  •  1    AAT  at  f 

ivirs.  j.  Alden  weir 

Genevieve 

30x25 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

June 

24x33 

Paul  Schulze 

The  High  Pasture 

MH  x34X 

Phillips  Memorial  Gallery 

Driving  the  Cows  to  Pasture 

34x25 

Burton  Mansfield 

The  Orchid 

24x20 

Frank  L.  Babbott 

The  Green  Coat 

30x  18 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

[  *3+  ] 


LIST  OF  TAINTIJ^CS 


TITLE 

The  Fur  Pelisse 

A  Pleasant  Letter 

Portrait  of  Albert  P.  Ryder 

White  Hair  Ribbons 

Portrait  of  an  Old  Man  with  a  Beard 

Lantern  Light 

The  Return  of  the  Fishing  Party 
Danbury  Hills 
Early  Morning 
Autumn 

Black  Birch  Rock 

The  Hill  Road 

Moving  Clouds 

Peacock  Feathers 

Figure  in  Sunlight 

A  Connecticut  Grainfield 

A  Reverie 

The  Bindery 

Going  to  School 

Moonlight 

A  Group  of  Elms 

In  the  Doorway 

The  Valley 

The  Blue  Gown 

Autumn  in  the  Woods 

A  Corner  of  the  Field 

Rhododendrons 

The  Road  to  Nod 

The  Pasture  by  the  Pond 

Summertime 

Pelham's  Lane 

October  Day 


SIZE  OWNER 

26x2i>£  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

24x20  The  Feragil  Galleries 

24x20  National  Academy  of  Design 

24x20  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

30x25  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

28x23  Miss  Dorothy  Weir 

28x32  General  Edmund  Hayes 

Denver  Art  Club 

Mrs.  Albright 

36x29  Corcoran  Gallery  of  Art 

23x27  Charles  L.  Baldwin 

24x20  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

25x30  The  Macbeth  Gallery 

69^  X40  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

29x36  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
Charles  V.  Wheeler 

20  x  24  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

24x20  George  Barr  McCutcheon 

24x20  A.  A.  Healy 

33^x24  Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

20x24  R.  C.  and  N.  M.  Vose 


Henry  Smith 


[  '35  ] 


JULIAS^  ALD8N 


TITLE 
Barns  at  Windham 
Pink  Peonies  in  a  Blue  Jug 
White  Peonies 
Pink  Peonies 
The  Old  Apple  Tree 
The  Lace  Cape 
Memories 
Buttercups 


SIZE 

24x34 
23x27 
24x29 

20x24 


20x24 


OWNER 

Mrs.  George  Page  Ely 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
Mrs.  John  A.  Rutherfurd 
Mrs.  Denis  O'Sullivan 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 


Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 


1910-1919 

Lady  in  Black.  Dated  1910  23x18 

The  Pet  Bird.  1910  29x22 
The  Flower  Girl — facing  right.  19 10 

The  Flower  Girl  —  facing  left.  191 1  39^2  X29 

Girl  in  Profile.  1912  33^x24 

Nassau — Bahamas.  1914  32x36 

Ships  at  Nassau.  1914  30x25 

Nassau  from  the  Garden.  19 14  25x30 

The  Lighthouse — Nassau.  19 14  25x30 

House  and  Garden  —  Nassau.  1914  25x30 

The  Japanese  Bridge  —  Nassau.  19 14  25x30 

The  Beach — Nassau.  1914  25x30 

The  Porch — Nassau.  1914  25x30 

The  Wharves  —  Nassau.  1914  25x30 

The  Palm  Leaf  Fan.  1914  34x28 

Portrait  of  Miss  de  L.  19 14  3°x25 

The  Hunter.  19 14-15  30x25 
The  Old  Sentinel  on  the  Farm.  191 5 

A  Follower  of  Grolier.  1916  39x3x 
A  Harmony  in  Yellow  and  Pink.  191 6 

A  Bit  of  New  England.  191 6  24x20 

Midsummer.  1916  24x20 


Frank  L.  Babbott 
Mrs.  F.  S.  Smithers 

W.  S.  Stimmel 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Horatio  S.  Rubens 

Mrs.  William  E.  Carlin 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Hon.  Alexander  Simpson,  Jr. 

Corcoran  Gallery  of  Art 

Paul  Schulze 

John  F.  Braun 

Detroit  Museum  of  Art 

John  F.  Braun 

Albert  E.  McVitty 

Herman  Hollerith 


[  136  ] 


LIST  OF  TAINTINJJS 


TITLE  SIZE 

Improvising.  19 17  39x24 

Queensboro'  Bridge  —  Nocturne  29x39 

The  Plaza — Nocturne  29x39 

The  Lute  Player  30x25 

Portrait  of  the  Artist's  Daughter  40x30 

Obweebetuck  24  x  34 

In  the  Woods  231^  xi6^ 

A  White  Oak  25x30 

Pan  and  the  Wolf  45><34 

Lizzie  Lynch  29  x  24 

The  Path  from  the  Studio  22  x  19^ 
Pussy-Willows 

The  Lace-Maker  30x25 

The  Spreading  Oak  39x50 

Fall  Pasture  30x25 

Windham  Village  25x30 

The  Fishing  Party  28x23 
Portrait  of  Colonel  H.  C.  Weir 
The  Peacock  Feather — Peacock  feather 

in  girl's  hat  30  x  25 
The  Peacock  Feather — Peacock  feather 

in  girl's  hand 

Snow  in  Windham  24x20 

An  American  Girl  35x27 

Hunter  and  Dogs  36x32 

Path  in  the  Woods  26x21^ 

Afternoon  by  the  Pond  25x30 

On  the  Shore  25x30 

Ravine  near  Branchville  25x30 

Three  Trees  27x24 

In  the  Summerhouse  34x24 

The  Border  of  the  Farm  50x39^ 
A  Study  of  Rocks 


[  *37  ] 


OWNER 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
Horatio  S.  Rubens 
Horatio  S.  Rubens 
Paul  Schulze 

Syracuse  Museum  of  Fine  Arts 

George  M.  Oyster 

Mrs.  John  A.  Rutherfurd 

Edwin  C.  Shaw 

Phillips  Memorial  Gallery 

Mrs.  H.  M.  Adams 

Dr.  Henry  S.  Patterson 

Mrs.  James  Wall  Finn 

Paul  Schulze 

Colonel  C.  E.  S.  Wood 

Thomas  W.  Dunbar 

City  Art  Museum,  St.  Louis 

Phillips  Memorial  Gallery 

Colonel  H.  C.  Weir 

Charles  L.  Baldwin 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
Worcester  Art  Museum 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
Cincinnati  Art  Museum 
Charles  L.  Baldwin 
Horatio  S.  Rubens 
Charles  L.  Baldwin 
Charles  L.  Baldwin 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
Mrs.  Robert  C.  Vose 


JULTA^ALDSN  WEIT^ 


TITLE 

SIZE 

OWNER 

The  Japanese  Screen 

30x25 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Portrait  of  Mrs.  Weir  seated  by  the 

Window 

37/^  x29 

K4>-r>     T     All,,    AV    ' - 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Sunset 

30x25 

IV  /T           T      A  1  J  "\TLT 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

In  the  Shadow 

33#  x24 

J.  INewman 

At  the  Turn  of  the  Road 

20  x  24 

1\  A          T      A  1  J         T17"  * 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

The  Back  Lots 

24x33 

A  A           T       A  1  J          tit  • 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Fording  the  Stream 

25x30 

A  Jf           T      A  1  J          TIT  * 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Portrait  of  Mrs.  Ely 

72  X40 

Mrs.  George  Page  Ely 

Eleanor 

30x25 

AT              T        All            XXT  ' 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Knitting  for  Soldiers 

30x25 

rhillips  Memorial  Gallery 

Woodland  Rocks 

28%  X36X 

rnillips  Memorial  (jallery 

Near  Norwich 

Dr.  Robert  Milligan 

The  Letter 

30x25 

Horatio  S.  Rubens 

White  Birches  in  the  Woods 

27x33^ 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Apple  Tree  in  Blossom 

25x30 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

A  Morning  on  the  Piazza 

30x25 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Approaching  Shower 

Burr  H.  Brown 

The  Old  Apple  Orchard 

20  X  24 

Robert  Hosea 

Dates  Unknown 

Autumn  Days 

29x39 

Moratio  b.  Kubens 

Still  Life  —  Peonies 

34x27 

O    l~     «1    O     T?     C     TXT"  J 

Colonel  C.  E.  S.  Wood 

Garden  at  Night 

28x22 

L/Olonel  L,.  r,.  0.  wood 

Still  Life — Peonies 

28  x  20 

H/f            TT1           T        11    /">  1 

Mrs.  Helen  Ladd  Corbett 

Still  Life  —  Peonies 

36x24 

Mrs.  Helen  Ladd  Corbett 

Woman  with  a  Black  Hat 

Mrs.  Smith 

Landscape 

25^  X2I^ 

Herbert  Fleischhacker 

Landscape 

Edward  S.  Clark 

Landscape 

Edward  S.  Clark 

Landscape 

l6x  20 

Alexander  M.  Hudnut 

[  138  ] 


LIST  OF  TAINTI^GS 


TITLE 

Landscape 
The  Brook 

A  Connecticut  Landscape 

Head  of  an  Old  Man 

Early  Spring 

Portrait  of  a  Young  Girl 

A  Rainy  Day 

Head  of  a  Young  Girl 

Wood  Interior 

Turn  in  the  Road 

Head  in  Profile 


SIZE 
17x26^ 

I0JA  xl5TA 

IS*A  x26^ 

17x14 

20x24 


OWNER 


25x30 
20  x  24 
10x7 


Edwin  C.  Shaw 
Luxembourg  Gallery 

National  Academy  of  Design 
Charles  T.  Palmer 
Charles  T.  Palmer 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 


Watercolors 
1880- 1889 


Holland.  1881 
Canal  in  Holland.  1 88 1 
After  a  Storm,  Holland.  1881 
Dordrecht,  Holland.  1881 
Sketch  for  Harvesting.  1883 
Sketch  for  Sheep  Shearing.  1883 
On  the  Seine,  near  Paris.  1883 
A  Bit  of  Venice.  1883 
Interior  of  Anne  Hathaway's  Cottage. 
1883 

Church  where  Shakespeare  is  Buried  — 

Stratford-on-Avon.  1883 
Part  of  the  Old  Walls  at  Chester.  1883 
The  River  at  Bristol.  1883 
A  Windy  Day,  Venice.  1883 
On  the  Avon.  1883 
Venetian  Sails.  1883 


iOx  14 


[  J39  ] 


Burton  Mansfield 


20x13^       Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 


Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 


Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 


JULIA^ALDSN  WEI\ 


TITLE 

A  Scene  in  Venice.  1883 
The  Flower.  Dated  1885 
Two  Dogs.  Dated  1885 
Woman  Sewing.  Dated  1885 
Tired  Out.  Dated  1885 
A  Passing  Sorrow.  Dated  1887 
Fireside  Dreams.  Dated  1887 
Puritan  Maid 
In  the  Library 
The  Letter 

Preparing  for  Christmas 
Still  Life— Rabbit 
Roses 
Still  Life 


La  Cigale.  Dated  1894 


SIZE 

21x17 
14x20 

20x  14 

^o1^  x  16^ 

14x20 

52x32 

31  X  20^ 
31  X20 


OWNER 

Mrs.  George  Page  Ely 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
The  Players'  Club 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
Mrs.  John  A.  Rutherfurd 
Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
The  Feragil  Galleries 

The  Feragil  Galleries 
J.  W.  Young 
J.  W.  Young 


189O- I9OO 


1913 

New  London  Wharf  I2xi6 
Fishing  Boats — River  Thames,  Conn.  I2xi6 
Across  the  River  from  Groton,  Conn.  I2xi6 
Fishing  Pool  —  River  Itchen,  England  9% 


Wolvesly  Castle 
Near  Abbots  Worthy 
Road  to  Easton  —  Hampshire 
Mill  on  the  Itchen 
Chilland  Church 
Bewlo  Twyford  Bridge 
The  Itchen  — Hampshire 
Old  Sentinels  on  the  Itchen 
The  Weirs  —  Winchester 


93A  *33*A 
9% 

9}4  X13K 
9%  *i3^ 
9IA*I3IA 


[  HO  ] 


Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 


Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 

Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 
Charles  V.  Wheeler 


LIST  OF  TAINTI^GS 


TITLE 
Windy  Weather 

Izaak  Walton's  Pool  —  Itchen  River 
St.  Catherine's  Hill  —  Winchester 
The  Meadows  of  St.  Cross  —  Win- 
chester 

Church  at  Easton  —  Winchester 
River  Gate  on  Itchen  —  Near  Chilland 
On  the  Banks  of  the  Itchen 
A  Hidden  Pool 

A  Famous  Chalk  Stream  —  England 

Student's  Walk — By  the  Itchen 

Avington  Meadows 

Chilland 

Salisbury 

A  Bend  in  the  River 

Old  Dock  —  Near  New  London,  Conn. 

Itchen  Abbas 

River  Thames  —  New  London,  Conn. 
Hampshire  Meadows 


SIZE 

9%  x 

sy2  x 

9A  x 

gy2  x 

9~A  x 
9A  x 

sy2  x 
sy2  x 

9A  x 

sy2  x 
sy2  x 

8^x 

gy2  x 
9A  x 
9%  x 

9A  x 

9%  x 
sy2x 


OWNER 


VA 

*a 

lA 

rA 
rA 

rA 

i# 
rA 

*A 

rA 

rA 
rA 
rA 
rA 


The  Feragil  Galleries 


Mrs.  J.  Alden  Weir 


Dates 

On  the  Beach 

The  Japanese  Screen 

Landscape 

The  Builders 

Landscape 

Buildings  by  the  River 


Unknown 

5x7 

8^x12        F.  K.  M.  Rehn 
J.  G.  Butler,  Jr. 
G.  W.  Buek 

7x10  Mrs.  Lloyd  Williams 


GETTY  RESEARCH  INSTITUTE 


3  3125  01035  0094 


